Observance
by Celestially
Summary: What is life but a lasting struggle defined by specific instances of pleasure and misery? Holiday-themed stories woven together, slight DxL and slight DxT - Latest: Orthodox Easter, 2007. - DISCONTINUED
1. Christmas, 2000

So here's the deal: _Holiday. Themed. Shorts_. Why not? You'll definitely enjoy them if you like DxL, but they won't all be focused on the romance, so hopefully everyone will enjoy.

Haven't figured out if there's going to be any connection between the shorts yet, but I guess that won't matter until we get another one written in. Meanwhile, this would take place within the first year that Dante and Lady start working together. Whatever and whenever that means to you.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

**Edit, 1/23/09:** **Made a few changes to fit with my Plan. If you read it before this date, please reread it.**

In addition, I came up with a basic calendar regarding the year of the games—it's not perfect, mainly because I feel odd imagining DMC3 happening in the 90's (oh my childhood!), but the exact year isn't as important as when each of these stories takes place. Believe me, it'll be important to know what comes first as the chapters progress.

* * *

**Observance**

_Christmas_

_December 25__th__, 2000_

"I don't even celebrate Christmas," Lady said, readjusting Kalina Ann on her shoulder, a habit that Dante had very quickly associated with Lady being annoyed but not full-out angry, "and I _still_ think that Christmas is an awful day to have to hunt demons."

"Why?" Dante asked, walking alongside her into the empty barn, sidestepping a trail of blood. Cow's blood, according to the farmer. The demon—which he had helpfully described as "this big red thing," and Dante guessed was that he _wasn't_ referring to Santa Claus—had gotten a hold of one of his cows before disappearing into the barn to eat it amongst the farming equipment, now useless when there was snow on the ground.

"Because I like having my holidays off, except for two," she said. "And that's my birthday and Valentine's Day."

Dante chuckled. "I can see why you'd like hunting demons on your birthday. But ... Valentine's Day? Why would you want to work when you could, you know, be doing _other things_?"

In his peripheral vision, Lady visibly tensed. "Because," she started, and there was an ungainly pause in the middle of her thought as she tried to come up with a plausible answer, "I _love_ my job."

"Okay," he remarked, and didn't push it. She seemed to enjoy not answering questions fully and completely, leaving information out so that he wouldn't know as much about her as he wanted to know. Some things she would tell him—basic information about herself, her life. But whatever seemed to matter, things that were more open to interpretation and would allow him a greater insight into the way she thought, she would automatically cover up with a general comment or a stupid joke. He wasn't necessarily frustrated by it, because he more often than not did the same thing, which despite all logic actually made them get along fairly well. They were both strong personalities, hers oddly more aggressive than his, which was definitely a lazy one, and they seemed to be doing fairly well so far in their partnership—so let her keep her secrets. He didn't mind.

"That wasn't my question, though," he continued, glancing over at her.

Lady frowned and looked up at him, and he at her, and for the first time since the conversation had started, they were actually looking at each other. "Yes, it was," she slowly responded.

"No, earlier," Dante corrected. "I meant about not celebrating Christmas. You just not Christian or something?"

"Oh." Lady looked forward again. "No—I mean, yes, I'm theoretically Christian, but now I'd say I'm more of an agnostic raised Christian." She shook her head. "I stopped going to Church a long time ago." She frowned, glancing at him in confusion. "Actually, I've always wondered ... what about you? Do you practice anything?"

Dante snorted. "Oh fuck no," he answered. "I can't imagine being religious in any way knowing the things I know. Especially not with my Dad around. Religion and demons don't really mix."

Lady nodded. "So you're atheist?"

"I don't believe in anything that I don't know is true," Dante said. Likewise, he didn't believe in anything that didn't believe that other things were true, like how nothing seemed to acknowledge who he was. Religion didn't understand demons, much less demons like his father, and even less demons like him. It was just another thing that being the Son of Sparda seemed to entail.

"But you celebrated Christmas?"

"Mom insisted. Dad thought it was cute. Vergil and I just liked getting presents." Dante paused, wondering why he was sharing so much with her so freely. "Anyway, I stopped celebrating Christmas when I stopped having a reason to celebrate."

"Yeah," Lady admitted. "Same."

She stopped in her tracks, and Dante continued for a few more steps, listening to his footsteps crunch against the frozen ground before stopping as well. The air was thick and the temperature had suddenly dropped—it was going to snow soon. White Christmas. He had never seen the appeal. Or, at least, he hadn't in a long time.

Christmas was supposed to be a time of caring, generosity, and togetherness, his mother had taught him. It was all about spending time with the people you loved and showing how much they care about each other. The mere act of giving a present was supposed to be a selfless expression of thanks, because weren't supposed to expect anyone to give you something in return. Or so his mother had told him and Vergil, but they had been too young to really appreciate it, and instead tearing at the colored wrapping paper as their parents watched with affection.

Then he had been left alone, and there had been nobody to celebrate Christmas with. He did his service to the world by doing jobs on Christmas for free, figuring that it was the least he could do. It was once a year—no big deal. Lady had been surprised to hear that this job was, in fact, a free one, but had smiled regardless, apparently stunned by his generosity. Well, he was pretty generous when he wanted to be. His mother had taught him well.

Christmas had been such a lonely time of year for him after his mother's death and Vergil's disappearance, and he had stopped noticing how depressing of a holiday it was for him—at least until Lady had woken him up this morning, having fallen asleep on the couch the night before. She seemed to have gotten the point about how to wake him up, something that his mother, on Christmas, had never conceded to. She would start by gently prodding him awake, at which point she would realize that Dante slept like a rock and it would be more beneficial to wake up Vergil first, since the older twin wasn't as afraid of jumping on his brother to wake him up. Seeing her shake him awake, leaning above him, hair tousled from sleep on the couch, had reminded him of what the holiday had used to be like. Of how it used to be special. Of how it used to be something that he _shared_ with people, rather than something that was spent alone.

So maybe she hadn't been dragging him downstairs to eat breakfast and open presents, and then watch cartoons for hours while drinking eggnog, not because they particularly enjoyed eggnog, but because that was what you _did_ on Christmas. Lady had actually been waking him up to go on this job, having answered Enzo's early morning call downstairs. There had been something so exhilarating about them going out into the crisp winter air and riding their motorcycles out of the city, into the cloudy gray skies of the rural outskirts to kill a big red not-Santa demon and not get paid to do it, hunting simply out of the kindness of their hearts and maybe just a bit for the thrill of the hunt. Together they could have their own traditions, doing things in unconventional ways simply due to circumstance.

"Lady," Dante said, fishing into his pocket and retrieving a small box with a bow on it. He tossed it behind him, and heard her fumble to catch it. "Merry Christmas."

"I didn't get you anything," Lady responded after a pause. "I didn't know—"

"It's fine. Open it." Dante walked forward again in search of the big red thing that was terrorizing the cows.

Again, there was another pause as Lady opened the box. Dante, trying not to look at her, looked at the dark green tractor next to him instead, searching for a flash of red.

"A cord chain?" she finally asked, and he turned to look at her. She was holding it between her thumb and index finger, staring at him curiously.

"You mentioned that the one you use is fraying," he explained, barely resisting the urge to shove his hands into his pockets. "Figured you'd need a new one before it breaks and you lose the necklace."

Lady looked back at the cord in her hands, rolling it between her two digits, and then, smiling, put it back in its box and into one of the pockets of her skirt. She looked back at Dante, arms hanging awkwardly by her sides as if she were figuring out what to do with them. She took a tentative step forward, then another, then stopped. "Thank you," she said, a sincere smile gracing her face.

"Don't mention it," Dante responded sincerely. "I didn't want you to lose that necklace."

"No, it's perfect," she said. "It's funny, I had even forgotten that I needed to get that, but you remembered anyway." Perhaps in an attempt to fill the eerie, pre-snow silence, she joked: "If you were fatter and had a beard, I'd say that you looked like Santa Claus."

"Yeah, because I have white hair and wear red. Funny. I've never heard that one," he deadpanned.

"I'm just saying," she explained, almost apologetically.

To be honest, he wasn't sure what was supposed to happen next. Seeing as they were on a job, officially, it probably involved killing their Santa-demon and getting home rather than standing around like idiots in a frozen barn. He wasn't sure what they would do afterwards. She might go back to her apartment and he back to the shop, and they would each spend their Christmas alone, mourning the loss of their loved ones and wondering if there was anything they could do to make Christmas Christmassy again. Or they might hang out together, watch Christmas specials on TV, laugh and joke—and buy some eggnog and spike it, just because they had never been able to do that as children.

They would celebrate Christmas again, for the first time in—well, for him, it had been about fifteen years. It was probably a bit less for her, maybe ten or so, but to the same effect. The holiday season didn't have to be something to dread, and the idea of being the Son of Sparda wasn't as daunting.

"Okay," he finally said, pointing behind him with his thumb. "Let's go kill that demon."

Lady sighed in exasperation and slapped her hands against her thighs. "Get over here _now_ so I can hug you before I change my mind."

Dante blinked. "Wait—what?"

"_Now_."

"Yes ma'am," he said, quickly stepping forward to meet her. He raised his arms uncomfortably, wrapping them around her smaller frame as if it would burn to touch her. He nearly started when her thin arms suddenly wrapped around his chest, clutching him almost in an almost desperate thank you. He eventually relaxed and drew her closer, the hairs on her head tickling his nose.

"What do _you_ want for Christmas?" Lady asked, cheek pressed against his jacket. Surprisingly, she didn't try to move.

"Don't worry about it," he answered, shutting his eyes because he knew that she wouldn't notice.

"But—"

"It's fine."

Outside, it started to snow.


	2. New Year's Eve, 2005

Hey everyone! Thank you so much for your support for the Christmas drabble! Here's the New Year's drabble, posted late because I totally forgot to write this when I had the chance. D'oh! I hope it isn't sloppy, because I wrote it kind of quickly—or as quickly as I could, given the fact that it's seven pages long. Some drabble!

Quick explanation of when this is, since it might be a little unclear, and also since I use the anime's canon more as a reference for the timeline than as actual canon: a little over a year after DMC1, Lady returned to Devil May Cry, USA from wherever she had been hiding. Trish returned from her Solo Adventures a few months later, and within the year started working with Dante again. It's now the end of the year—Lady and Trish have known each over for less than a year, and it's their first New Year's Eve as a trio. And can you believe it, it's from Lady's perspective! That's different from the usual _Passage of Time_ fare. I hope you enjoy!

I don't own _Devil May Cry_, man. Don't own it.

* * *

**Observance**

_New Year's Eve_

_January 31st, 2005_

She hated the pretense of New Year's Eve—hated the rituals and countdown and resolutions that nobody really kept—but she still found herself on that damn leather couch, waiting for the new year to arrive year after year after _year_. And despite her best efforts, _this_ year would be no different.

This was all because Trish, damn her, had seen through the "I'm spending New Years with other people" lie. Was it really that hard to believe that she had other friends?

"Yes," Trish said, crossing her arms.

Honestly, it wasn't as if she had a real excuse, because she had just planned to read a book and go to bed before midnight. What bothered her more was the fact that Trish was under the impression that Lady was incapable of having other friends. Never mind the fact that Trish was right about not having friends—but Lady _could_, if she had the time.

"I _should_ be offended," Lady replied, attempting to outdo Trish's crossed arms with the classic hands-on-hips-and-glare pose that she had mastered before Trish had even been _created_.

"Are you?" the blonde asked, merely raising an eyebrow in response. Oh, she was _good_.

"Depends. Do you want to stick around to find out?" Lady threatened, right fingers inching towards the gun at her hip.

"Ladies, ladies!" Dante cut in, placing himself between the two women. He put a hand on each of their shoulders in some kind of odd gesture of reassurance. Or maybe it was apologetic. It _was_ his fault for extending the invitation in the first place. "Come on, no fighting."

"I _have_ other friends, Trish," Lady insisted. She was scowling at Trish but found herself looking at Dante instead, hoping that he would back her up and agree with her despite the fact that, well, she didn't, and he knew it. She just didn't want Trish to know.

"Then why don't you spend time with them?" Trish asked, her voice all too innocent as she scrutinized her nails.

"Trish," Dante warned, and he then looked back at Lady reassuringly. "You don't have to answer that if you don't want to."

"And why shouldn't I answer?" Lady shouted in offense, ripping herself away from Dante's grip. "I do, I'm just busy hunting demons all the time! Besides, how would you know what I do with my time? Are you stalking me?"

"Why would I want to do _that_?" the blonde answered, wrinkling her nose. Lady had never wanted to punch a person more than she wanted to punch Trish. "But," she added, "I can't say the same for Dante."

Correction: she had never wanted to punch a person more than she wanted to punch _Dante_.

"Before you hit me," Dante started, flinching slightly though they both knew that her punches, no matter how hard, wouldn't hurt him for longer than a second—and to think, he hadn't even bothered protesting Trish's accusation, the bastard. "It's just New Year's Eve! Come on, we used to hang out every year."

"And I'm telling you both, I'm hanging out with _other __people_ on New Year's Eve," Lady insisted.

"Fuck them! Hang out with _us_!" Dante smiled that stupid, charming grin of his, confident because he knew that there _were_ no other people—there never had been, which was why she had spent the holidays with him every single year. She was angry with herself for needing him to bail her out like this, but was grateful for the help, at the very least. She would just have to stretch out the argument a little longer so that he could give her more incentive to join them. "We can even drink champagne this year, if you want to."

"You hate champagne," she said, smirking.

"_Cheap_ champagne. The good stuff is good." Obviously. "See? I'm willing to shell out on good champagne for you. The least you could do is show up." He grinned even wider, and that was it. They both knew that he didn't even _need_ to ask again, but he would anyway for the sake of her pride. "What do you say?"

She rolled her eyes, jabbed him in the chest with her index, and said: "You owe me," although in this case she kind of owed _him_ for saving her the embarrassment of having to explain that she _had_ no plans, or friends for that matter.

But now she also _had_ to be there. Fantastic.

"I don't know who you're trying to fool," Trish commented later, and while the words themselves appeared harsh, her tone was light and her eyes amused, "but if you're trying to look like you didn't want to say yes to Dante, you're going to have to try a bit harder than that."

Busted. Almost. Lady wasn't entirely sure of what Trish had been getting at with that comment, if she was calling the brunette out on her lie or making some kind of ... _insinuation_ regarding her relationship with Dante. She figured the best answer, accompanied by a chilling glare, was a non-answer: "What the _hell_ are you talking about?"

Trish chuckled lightly, seemingly satisfied by the response. "Good answer."

* * *

New Year's Eve had always had its traditions. Back in the day when her parents had had a peaceful marriage—or, maybe, Lady had been too young to notice that there was something amiss—they had gone to dinner parties hosted by her father's coworkers while she stayed at home with her nanny and watched _New Year's Rockin' Eve_. When her parents had deemed her old enough to go with them to the parties, which was when she was around eight years old or so, she was dragged along as well, where she was forced to act the part of the trophy daughter in front of adults she only barely remembered from the last "Take Your Daughter to Work" Day.

Soon, these parties became the tradition, and each year she found herself at Mr. Bishop's house, standing uncomfortably as her father made jokes that were stiff at best. When she wasn't conversing with adults she barely knew, her mother tried to make her spend time with Bishop's young son, Jake, which may or may not have been a matchmaking effort on her part. Jake, however, avoided her each year, wanting nothing to do with quiet Mary Arkham and her creepy eyes, following his older brother around instead. She had wanted nothing to do with him anyway, so there.

Her mother had always had her own tradition on New Year's Eve, which was to be adorably enthusiastic when it got close to midnight. She would lead the countdown, and the others would let her, probably because Kalina Ann was a very charming, pretty person in youth and it was hard to dislike her. And when midnight would come, she celebrated the coming of the New Year with wide, open arms, and a big kiss on the cheek for her daughter. And Lady let her, because she also found it hard to dislike her mother for anything.

She hated those parties.

They stopped going to New Year's parties when her father got caught up in some project of his, and her mother offered to let a fourteen-year-old Mary spend New Year's Eve with friends rather than with family, if she felt like it. She told herself that she stayed at home not because she wasn't sure she had anyone to celebrate with, but because her mother needed her, and chose to spend the night watching _New Year's Rockin' Eve_ from her mother's bed. She hadn't been able to name what she felt when her mother dozed off before midnight, nor what she felt when Kalina Ann opened her eyes at 12:30 and smiled, the premature wrinkles around her lips and eyes emphasizing just how tired she had become this past year as she wished her daughter a Happy New Year with a weak hug rather than the big one she usually graced people with.

They only suffered through one more painful New Year's Eve like that before the Incident.

Then came the years when Lady spent New Year's Eve alone, and she didn't celebrate at all, but went to bed early out of spite if she wasn't up hunting demons. Those were eventually replaced by pseudo-celebrations at Devil May Cry with Dante, which Lady honestly found refreshing because he didn't buy into the bullshit rituals either. Their New Year's Eves became a tradition in their own right, where they would sit together, she at the sofa and he at his desk, eating pizza and drinking beer, _New Year's Rockin' Eve_ on but muted in favor of conversation. There were no sentimental recaps of the year, no resolutions to not-keep, and even if they had wanted to do the countdown, they always missed it by at least ten minutes. Not that they cared.

She hadn't spent the last two New Year's Eves with Dante. The first was because she was out of town; the second because she had been avoiding him. So this year, for the first time in two years, Lady found herself on the leather sofa in the main room of Devil May Cry on New Year's Eve. Dante was sitting at this desk with Trish, a relative newcomer having only been around for a few years now, perched on the corner. And there were no resolutions, no awkward small talk with strangers, and no being pushed to hang out with kids that she wouldn't have wanted to hang out with even if they had wanted to hang out with her.

As Lady sat back and appreciated their celebration for what it was—a non-celebration—she asked herself why she had tried to wheedle her way out of spending the evening with Dante when she had always enjoyed herself in previous years. It wasn't because Trish was joining their party for the first time: after all, Trish was a bitch, but Lady liked that about her because she was a _nice_ bitch, and an honest one at that. And Dante ... was complicated. Dante was an arrogant bastard when you first met him, but kind of a chill guy when you got to know him. He considered her a dear friend whether she liked it or not, and, to be honest, she considered him a friend despite herself. Altogether they made a pretty good trio, and a kickass one at that.

New Year's felt _wrong_. Maybe she was just used to spending it alone again. Or maybe she was just getting older. Yeah, sure, because thirty was old.

"It's almost midnight," Lady said, interrupting Dante in the middle of a speech that, to be honest, she had only been half-listening to, trapped in her own mind as she had been. "I'll unmute the TV."

"We _never_ do the countdown; why do you want to watch it?" Dante asked.

"It's a tradition," Lady explained, and she wasn't sure why she had used that explanation when she hated the mainstream New Year's traditions in the first place—and he was right, they had always ignored the television until it was too late.

"It is?" Dante scratched his head. "Since when?"

"I don't understand why people get so excited for the New Year," Trish said, absently reaching for one of the remaining slices of pizza, despite the fact that it was a bit cold and chewy by this point. "It's _just_ another year. I thought that's what birthday celebrations were for."

"You're still celebrating it, though," Lady argued.

"Barely. I'm just sitting here like I would on any night, only I don't expect us to get any calls for work." Trish took an unflinching bite of pizza. "If the rest of the world is celebrating and I'm watching it on TV, that's just a coincidence."

"I kind of feel the same way," Dante agreed, taking a sip of champagne. "But it's still a party, right? Even if we don't do it the right way."

Lady chuckled and unmuted the television, and suddenly a cacophony of cheers and music filled the room. While she immediately turned down the volume a bit because it was too loud, there was something oddly comforting about the sounds of the partying. It reminded her of the godforsaken dinner parties that, as awful as they were, she kind of missed.

Maybe her face was wistful and nostalgic, and gave away the fact that she had spaced out, because Trish asked: "What?"

Lady shook her head. "No, nothing. Just reminiscing."

"About how you used to do New Year's Eve?" When Lady nodded, Trish sighed and continued: "Okay. I have to know. What are the actual traditions for New Year's Eve? This one," she pointed at Dante in annoyance, "hasn't been particularly helpful in explaining them to me."

"I never really pay attention to that shit myself," Dante said in his defense. Lady forgot sometimes that Trish, having arrived in the human world only two years ago, was unfamiliar with human culture, and had learned most of what she knew from, of all people, _Dante_. It was a wonder she knew how to do anything other than look good, answer the phone, and hunt demons.

"Oh God..." Lady mused, leaning back in her seat. She thought of the traditions so rarely that it was difficult to remember the specifics. "Well, for starters, we're not supposed to drink the champagne until midnight."

Dante laughed. "Too late!" he exclaimed, and then he took another swig from the bottle of champagne.

"And ... I don't know." She shook her head in frustration. "I used to go to dinner parties to celebrate. That's all I know. People would stand around and talk about _work_ and the _year_ and what they wanted to accomplish in the next one, and I never really paid attention to any of it because I was bored out of my mind."

"Sounds boring," Trish agreed. "Does anyone ever really accomplish their resolutions?"

"No—well, yes, but it never lasts. Honestly, everyone would just say that they wanted to lose weight, or start working out, and only ten percent of the people would actually lose the weight or keep it off, or maintain a good workout schedule." She shrugged. "I always came up with bullshit resolutions on the spot, and never actually did them."

"I resolve to make more money next year," Dante suddenly and very proudly announced. Lady and Trish could only stare at him incredulously in response. "So that's not a _real_ resolution," he continued. "I'm still going to do it."

Trish shook her head. "That's a stupid tradition."

"I agree." Lady stretched her arms, which were getting a bit stiff. "It's just a lot of stupid shit like that. Everyone counts down the last minute of the year, and then you basically just give everyone a hug when the New Year starts."

"I heard it's a kiss," Dante interjected.

"...you want to _try_ something?" she threatened.

"I'm just saying," he continued. "I always heard that you were supposed to kiss the person next to you at midnight."

"It doesn't matter," Lady said after a pause, during which she had eyed Dante wearily. "The idea is that you're supposed to greet the New Year with family and friends, because it brings good luck for the next year, or something."

"That's it?" Trish asked.

"Pretty much." Lady shrugged again. "I just stood around and was forced to make small talk with people who were a lot older than me, until it was finally midnight and I got to sneak sips of champagne from my mother's glass."

"I like our version better," Trish concluded, taking another bite of chewy pizza as she looked at the television set with disdainful interest.

Lady smiled. "Yeah, me too."

* * *

They didn't count down the last minute, instead sitting in silence as the ball dropped and announced the beginning of the New Year. As confetti and glitter and fireworks inundated the television screen, Lady felt herself get up and, despite herself, pull first Trish, then Dante into a tight hug. Both, stunned, didn't even return the hug.

"What was _that_?" Trish asked as Lady pulled away from Dante, who was looking up at her from his seat with a mix of confusion and joy.

"Happy New Year," Lady quietly offered, suddenly feeling incredibly self-conscious.

"I thought you hated those traditions," Trish said, genuine confusion apparent in her face.

"So did I."

The blonde smiled, and it was a mixture of knowing and absolutely mischievous. "So when you celebrate New Year's with your _other friends_," she started, and with those words Dante seemed to snap out of whatever trance he was under, stood up, and looked at Trish with horror, "do you do the traditions with them too?"

It hadn't been mean-spirited, per se, but Lady still felt put on the spot. Both Dante and Trish were looking at her expectantly, both waiting to see how she would respond to that statement but for entirely different reasons. Trish, she had decided, simply enjoyed _testing_ her, for reasons that she wasn't sure she would ever understand because Lady had theoretically gotten there first. Other than that, they got along rather well.

Dante was just ... _concerned_. He did that sometimes. So long as it wasn't regarding her facing off a demon that he felt was "too big" for her, she thought it was kind of sweet.

"I don't," Lady finally answered. "Just with you." —_because I don't _have_ other friends to spend New Year's with_. "Have a problem with that?"

Trish smiled. "Good answer."

"Come on, babes, it's the New Year!" Dante suddenly exclaimed, perhaps in order to change the subject. He pulled both women into his arms, where they shared a look of affectionate exasperation for the big lug in red. "We have to celebrate! I can't say for sure that we have any champagne left—" A quick glance at the bottle that Dante had just polished off said no. "—but that doesn't mean we can't have a good time!"

Trish laughed lightly. "He's right, you know."

"God forbid," Lady agreed.

"I'll get the tequila," Trish offered, prying herself from Dante's grip to strut into the kitchen, leaving the two of them alone with Lady still trapped in his arms.

"So," Dante said roguishly, "did you miss this?"

Lady gave him a look. "Dante, I swear to God I will hurt you if you try to kiss me."

He immediately—and guiltily—released her.

Taking a step back, Lady smiled, both at Dante and the night's promise of friendship and tequila shots, and added: "But yes. I did."


	3. Trish's Birthday, 2005

Because it's completely uncharacteristic of me to just, you know, write a bunch of drabbles which, while deeply rooted in character development, are ultimately just light and fluffy, I'm going with Ambition. Capitalized, because it's _ambitious_. So, welcome to _Observance_, a tale of lifelong struggle told through a series of moments. _Festive_ moments. Expect some humor, as it's impossible to avoid it in this series, but also expect some melancholy and grief.

So part of the Big Ambitious Plan is that each story is within one chronology, and are told out of order. To help you guys along, I'm providing years for when all of this happens—yeah, I tried my best to choose a good series of years for this, but I don't think my inner child will ever get over the idea that DMC3 took place in the early nineties. The pain!

Keep in mind that this story is _entirely_ separate from _The Passage of Time_, most importantly in terms of the dates of things like anniversaries and whatnot: they don't match up! There might be a few similar themes, a couple of parallel struggles and situations, but the two fics are independent, and are certainly different. For starters ... this one might hurt a little more. At least, that's the direction it seems to be heading in.

PS: Anime isn't really a part of this Canon, mainly because it isn't inconvenient. All four games are a part of the timeline, though.

**IMPORTANT: If you read the Christmas story before 1/23/09, please go back and read it! It's been updated.**

* * *

**Observance**

_Birthday: Trish_

_January 23__rd__, 2005_

Humans, Dante had told her, celebrated birthdays. Demons didn't, and in response to her unasked question, he explained that while demons obviously had a system of time, they didn't use to measure the countless years of their semi-endless lives. Humans did, because they feared death.

"You have a birthday, though," Trish said, though it was as much a question as it was a statement.

"In March," he answered plainly, "a few months ago."

"Why didn't we celebrate it?" Trish asked, confused.

Dante shrugged and smiled that handsome smile of his. "Didn't want to spring it on you," he explained. "Not when you don't have a birthday."

He then added that they were going to give _her_ a birthday, because all humans had birthdays, and she was a human. Or, at least, she wanted to be. She _strived _to be. She was feeling more and more human each day, but human customs still escaped her, slipping through her frustrated fingers despite Dante's best attempts to explain things to her. No offense to him, but he was a little bit awful at explaining things that didn't involve demon hunting or his favorite foods.

"Birthdays are supposed to celebrate _birth_," she stated, knowing she was being obvious but she wasn't entirely sure how she was supposed to address her concern. "I wasn't really born, though. I just came into existence."

"Close enough," Dante offered.

"No," Trish continued. She rested her elbow on her other arm, propping her chin against her hand as she looked down in thought. "I don't even know when that was, anyway. Maybe ... no, I don't know. I can't remember."

She glanced up at Dante who was watching her with strange eyes, and suddenly felt self-conscious. Something about his eyes made her feel so disoriented, not only because the vivid blue sometimes reflected silver for reasons that she had yet to figure out, but because of the looks he seemed to give her, looks that for the life of her she couldn't read. But no, she had already made _her_ decision—it wasn't her fault he was being so wishy-washy.

Dante then shook his head. "You know what? Screw when Mundus created you. I have a better idea."

And so Trish's birthday became the day she and Dante met, January 23rd.

* * *

"You okay?" Dante asked, his hand already gripping the handle of the door but not pulling it open.

Trish blinked in surprise at the question, which had come out of nowhere for her. "Why wouldn't I be?" They were in the sunken entrance of a bar a few blocks away from Devil Never Cry, the pavement damp from the melting snow that was gathering at a drain at their feet, the weather having thankfully let up from the near-consistent snowfall and subzero temperatures that the city had been graced with for the past week. It had been almost mild this time last year when Trish had first arrived, but the temperature had dropped to the twenties afterward, much to her chagrin. Turned out the city was colder than she had first anticipated—or liked. Even though she could resist winter, her _clothes_ couldn't.

Dante didn't respond to her question, or _move_ for that matter, his hand still gripping the handle of the door. The bar that they were going to enter, if Dante _let_ them, seemed narrow and dank, with dark, dirty windows. It was called—oh hell, she couldn't even read the sign. But apparently it was worth it: Dante said that it had some of the best drinks in town, including something that he called a "Bloody Bull," which apparently had _meat_ in it. It was not the first time that Trish would question Dante's sanity, nor would it be the last.

"Is this the part where we go into the bar and celebrate my birthday?" Trish asked, crossing her arms. "Let me know when it is."

Dante smiled after a pause, and pulled open the door, stepping into the smoky bar. As Trish followed him in, she was attacked a suddenly rush of smoke, the smell of alcohol, and the sound of people talking, but she didn't wince. While her senses were more attune than others, smoke did nothing to affect a woman who was used to the reek of Hell. Still, she wondered whether or not a human woman would find the smoke at least a little bit aggravating, and coughed lightly.

Naturally, Dante heard that, and looked at her over his shoulder as they walked into the bar. "_Sure_ you're okay?" he asked suspiciously.

"Of _course_ I am," she insisted, shrugging coquettishly. "Why wouldn't I be? It's just a _bar_."

Dante didn't answer—or at least, if he did, she didn't hear it, and he was already facing front again, and pushing past the other tables to get to the one unoccupied booth in the corner. As they sat, a lanky waiter with messy red hair approached them, a crooked smile on his face.

"Dante!" the waiter exclaimed, patting the demon hunter on the back with surprising vigor for a man so skinny. "Long time no see!" He looked up and made a pensive face. "Now let's see ... I have a feeling you're going to be starting with a Jack and Coke..."

"Aw, Pete, I knew you wouldn't forget," Dante answered, grinning at the other man. "How've you been?"

Pete shrugged. "Same old, same old. Christine gave birth. Beautiful baby girl."

"No shit!" Dante exclaimed, slapping the table. "Does she have your goofy red hair?" As Pete laughed sarcastically, Dante looked at Trish. "Trish, this is Pete, my _favorite_ waiter here. Pete, Trish."

"I was waiting for you to introduce us." With another Pete extended his hand to Trish, who almost forgot to shake it. "Charmed," he added, giving her a good look over.

"Likewise," Trish responded with a nice smile. He had mentioned someone earlier who sounded like his wife, but ... oh, what the hell, she liked the attention.

"So how'd you meet this asshole, Trish?" Pete asked,

"We're partners," she said, and left it at that. She wasn't sure how much Pete knew about Dante's particular line of work, or how much _anyone_ knew for that matter. It seemed like the kind of thing that people would only know about if they _needed_ to know about. Humans still liked to believe that there was no such thing as demons. If they got strange looks when they went outside—which was rare enough as it was—she figured it was because there weren't many young-looking, leather-clad, extraordinarily attractive white-haired men and tall blonde women around.

"Ah, _that_," Pete cryptically responded, and shook his head. "Well, what can I get you?"

"A Screaming Orgasm, if you have them here," Trish said. Oh, of course there was innuendo, but wasn't that supposed to be the fun part? She smiled, sweetly, of course, because she didn't want to lay it on _too_ heavily.

Pete grinned wolfishly. "Well, if you _insist_..." He feinted leaning in towards Trish and immediately pulled back, laughing heartily. "No, I'm kidding—my wife would kill me. Yeah, we make 'em. Still want one?"

"Of course." She winked lightly for good measure.

Pete laughed again. "You're too much, Trish!" He shook his head, his laugh dying down. "I'll be back with your drinks in a bit."

Trish watched the waiter retreat before looking back at Dante, who was staring at her with a look of slight incredulity. "What?" she asked, resting her elbow against the table and propping her chin against that hand.

"You're..." Dante shook his head. "He's _married_."

"I'm just having fun," she insisted. "Besides, I thought you _liked_ it when girls flirt."

"When girls flirt with _me_," he explained, crossing his arms and leaning back in the booth.

"So if I flirt with _you_, you'll be okay with it?" Trish asked—a loaded question and they both knew it, but it was the only way for her to win the argument.

They sat in silence for a moment, Dante probably unable to decide whether he should answer that question honestly or with a joke, and Trish content to sit and let him suffer. Finally, to spare him, she asked: "So, let's see. What else do humans do on their birthdays?"

Dante's face lightened up as she veered away from that uncomfortable topic. "Well, we ate strawberry shortcake earlier," he started, "and remember that on _my_ birthday, because it's my _favorite_."

"You told me six times already," Trish interjected.

"And I got your present," Dante continued, and looked at her as if he expected another round of gratitude from her for his generous present.

She rolled her eyes. "Thank you again." The blades were very beautiful, though. She'd have to try them out soon, maybe even tomorrow. She was more of a gun and electricity fighter, swords sometimes, but fighting with those smaller blades would allow her to do different, close-range things that she didn't usually get to do. It would be fun.

"So the last thing you do on your birthday is party." Gesturing to the rest of the half-crowded, smoke-filled bar, he concluded: "Thus why we're here."

"Is that it?" Trish asked, disappointed. It all made sense, but she had gotten so excited about the idea of birthday celebrations that she felt let down by the idea that birthdays _weren't_ this big, exciting thing.

"Well, what you're supposed to do is take the fact that it's your birthday and use it to get your way," Dante explained, and then gestured to Pete, who was returning with their drinks. "Like this: hey, Pete!"

"Yeah?" Pete asked, drinks in hand.

"It's her birthday!" Dante announced, pointing at Trish with both hands, a highly overdramatic but effective gesture.

"You hear that?" Pete shouted, turning to the rest of the room with a grin on his face. "It's her birthday!"

The room suddenly erupted in cries of "Happy Birthday!" some more slurred than others. One person tried to start singing, but he was promptly told to shut the fuck up by the bartender, who waved a hello to Dante and Trish.

"You know, an attractive girl like you's probably going to get a lot of free drinks tonight," Pete continued, turning to face the table again.

"You offering?" Dante asked, grinning cheekily.

Pete rolled his eyes and put the drinks down. "So that's a Jack and Coke for Dante, and a Screaming Orgasm for the lady here."

"I'm looking forward to it," Trish flirtatiously replied, ignoring Dante's look.

"Speaking of, last time you were here—and it's been over a year because you didn't come _at all_ last year—" Pete stopped speaking to glare at Dante for being an unreliable customer. "It was on that friend of yours' birthday, right? Lady? Whatever happened to her?"

"She's working out of town right now," Dante explained. It was the truth, but Trish knew that under his calm surface Dante was feeling incredibly uncomfortable. Once again, she felt as though she needed to compete for attention with a woman who wasn't even there anymore—it seemed as though Dante kept on taking her to places where he had already been with his previous partner, and they would always ask about her. She hadn't even been _interested_ in him, Trish had to remind herself. They had _just_ been business partners. But the damage was already done: she was annoyed.

"Oh, that's too bad," Pete said, shaking his head. "Nice girl. Had a temper, but she was fun, wasn't she? Anyway, happy birthday, Trish."

"Thanks," she answered, perhaps a little more half-heartedly than she should have done, because now Dante would pick up on the fact that something was wrong. She tried to hide it by taking a sip of her Screaming Orgasm as if she were really preoccupied by the drink, but from the look on Dante's face, he already knew.

Once Pete had gone to another table, Dante looked at her and quietly exhaled. "Okay. I should have warned you. This is one of my favorite bars, but usually just on special occasions, like my birthday." He looked aside and slowly continued: "When I was working with Lady, she would come too, and she wanted to go on _her_ birthday as well, so ... yeah, well, they know her here." Having gotten all of that out of the way, he took a swig of his Jack and Coke, and when he was done, comfortingly added: "You shouldn't be jealous."

"You _know_ why I am," she said, forcing all of the sharpness out of her tone so that he would drop the subject. The best way would have been to lie and say that she wasn't jealous, but she didn't want to lie. Didn't like to, anyway.

"I also know why you _shouldn't_ be," he insisted. "There was nothing for you to be jealous of."

Trish ran a hand through her hair, brushing back some of the shorter strands of hair in an attempt to curb her frustration. "Dante, it has nothing to do with _that_ and everything to do with the fact that everywhere we go is some place you've already been with your old partner." She looked at her glass, where she could see the imprint of her lips on the surface. "And we rarely go anywhere in the first place, so the few times we do I get bombarded with _memories_."

"I like going to the same places," Dante said, as if it were some sort of excuse. "They're good places. So what?" He took another sip of his drink. "Do you want me to stop liking this bar or that Chinese restaurant just because I went there with Lady for years?"

"I don't want to live in her _shadow_!" Trish hissed, losing her patience. Her eyes shot back up to Dante's, blue fighting blue. "Every place, it's the same thing. They always talk about how much they liked her as if I'm not there."

"You haven't given them a chance to get to know you!" he insisted. "Pete seems to like you just fine."

"Pete just thinks I'm _hot_. He _likes_ her."

"Pete was also scared of her."

"Well, at least she's _human_."

Her words caught both of them by surprise, having escaped her lips before she could hold them back. Dante simply stared back at her, a stunned look on his face, tinged with something akin to betrayal. There she was, holding humanity against someone when it was what she longed for so deeply; something that she felt as though she needed in order to distance herself from the smooth-talking treacherous devil that she had been before this time last year. She _wanted_ to be human, just like Dante—who, despite having demonic blood in him, was more human than anyone she had ever met—and just like the people around them at the bar, or everywhere for that matter. And she was trying, but it was harder than it looked.

"What's so great about being human, anyway?" She asked, knowing that Dante wasn't going to answer. She sighed. "I guess that's what I need to go find out."

"That ... has nothing to do with anything," Dante finally said, his eyes still locked on her.

"Does it?" she asked cryptically, shaking her head and looking down. "I don't understand how things work—I _do_, but I _don't_ at the same time. It's frustrating, and I'll never figure it out as long as I'm here."

"Trish, there's nothing _to_ figure out," he insisted, a deep frown setting into his face. "You're just ... I can't fucking explain this to you right now." He drained half of his Jack and Coke in a very large and fast gulp. "You're _human_. You look human, you act human, you're a good person. Who the hell cares if you actually have demonic blood? So do I—that doesn't stop me."

"But you have your little rituals and things that you do, and things that don't come naturally to me," she contended. How was she supposed to explain this to him? People looked at her and saw a human—and so did he, apparently—but she set herself aside, because she knew that she wasn't. She always wondered if she was doing the right thing, if this was what she was _supposed_ to do, or if she would give herself away with the slightest action. He was lucky enough to have grown up among them, to know better. "So you can tell me that devils never cry and change the name of the shop and do whatever you want, but I'm _not_ a human—"

"Yes, you _are_—"

"—and I never _will_ be," Trish finished, her voice as quiet as it had been before but colder than ever. "All I can ever do is _pretend_." She spat out that last word as if it were dirty. "Look at me, I'm celebrating a birthday when I don't even have one."

"You..." Dante started, struggling to find the right words. "You could _argue_ that you were reborn as a human, or something."

"That's stupid and you _know_ it," she countered, and the look on his face told her that she was at least a bit right. "The fact of the matter is, I don't have to celebrate a birthday because I'm not human, I won't age, I won't _die_ unless I'm killed, so it doesn't matter if I'm thirty or one hundred or anything. I'll outlive everyone I meet as long as I'm here." Her heart sunk. "Even you."

Dante didn't answer. She couldn't even read the look on his face, break down the wall and see what was on his mind. Her words had bothered him, that was for sure—maybe because her own insecurities were reminding him of his own.

And then she felt like shit, because she was complaining about being a whole demon and not a human when he had to deal with being neither one nor the other.

"I think I need to go off on my own," Trish concluded after a long pause, her long nails digging into her palms as she clenched her fists. "Try to live independently." She looked away from him when he glanced at her in confusion. "You treat me like a person. You don't judge me. And I'm sure a lot of girls can appreciate that, but I need to learn what it's like to be a human, and from someone who _can't_ relate to having demon blood. You understand me too well."

She looked back at Dante when he laughed softly, and saw that while he still seemed a little bit hurt, he was already recovering—maybe because he knew that she was right. "Never thought I'd get rejected by a girl because I'm _too_ good to her."

"Sorry, Dante, you're just not a big enough asshole," Trish joked lightly.

They laughed awkwardly for a moment, but she felt her fire extinguish quickly enough and couldn't bear to say anything, and chose to look at the wall instead.

"Want another one?" Pete suddenly asked as he walked over to their booth. He was pointing at her Screaming Orgasm, which was now empty. She hadn't even remembered finishing it.

"Can I get a Kamikaze instead?" Trish asked, only a little flirtatiously because she didn't have the energy.

In front of her, Dante drained the rest of his Jack and Coke. "You still make Mind Erasers?" he asked, putting his glass back on the table.

"You don't want a Bloody Bull?" Pete asked, apparently confused. "You always used to get that next. God, Lady thought those things were gross." Pete looked at Trish, the most well meaning look in his eyes. "What do you think? It's a Bloody Mary with beef bouillon."

"Sounds disgusting," she quietly echoed.

Pete's eyes widened and he glanced back and forth between the two demon hunters. "Shit, I'm sorry, are you two having a fight?"

"No," Dante said, just as Trish said: "Yes."

Pete stood still for a moment, and then nodded. "I'll be back in five with your new drinks."

After Pete retreated back to the bar, Dante looked back up at Trish with an almost guilty look on his face. "Let's just enjoy the rest of the night, okay? We can talk about it later."

Trish nodded, looking back at that spot on the wall she had grown to like. "Fine."

After another pause: "Trish?"

"Yeah?" she asked, looking at him.

He was smiling, and Trish almost forgot that she had already made her decision. "Happy Birthday."

It was too bad she was going to leave tonight. "Thanks, Dante."


	4. Valentine's Day, 2005

I'M SO SORRY THIS IS LATE! Work + illness = hard to find time to write and update on time. D: At least this is a bit longer to make up for the delay—but why do they keep on getting longer? Here's to that, um, not really happening anymore?

_Anyway_, this here Valentine's Day chapter is the first of several to have multiple POVs in different places. Basically, it's all the same day, only Dante's in one place, Trish another, and Lady another. This will happen a couple times (once where it's the same "day" but different years!) and I'm kind of excited for each of them because those moments of separate but intertwining stories is what I like about _Observance_.

For your information: Devil May Cry (the shop) is in some eastern city of the United States—which I can't say, because it doesn't exist and I won't name it. Take that as it is. Also, this chapter does directly follow the previous one in terms of chronology, but this is the only time it's going to happen.

Oh. Um. Additionally. Some slight sexual content in here. Don't think anyone will have a problem with it, but I feel the need to warn you, just in case. Let me know if, for some reason, you think this needs to be bumped up to M, but honestly I think it's vague enough to stay at T.

Next chapter at the beginning of March! I PROMISE. If you paid attention, you should be able to guess what the next chapter will be!

* * *

**Observance**

_Valentine's Day_

_February 14__th__, 2005_

_Love Planet, three blocks away from Devil May Cry_

Love Planet, despite being little more than a glorified strip club, had long since become the bastion of a neighborhood that was about as reputable as it had been before being destroyed over a decade ago. _Everything_ had been razed on the day that people liked to avoid talking about, and while city planners had attempted to use this opportunity to improve the city as a whole—while, for simplicity's sake, sticking to the previously established grid or lack thereof—people ended up gravitating back to their old homes. As a result, nice neighborhoods stayed nice and shitty neighborhoods ended up as shitty as they had been before.

Love Planet, however, was _different_. With the death of the previous owner during that horrible tragedy, the lot had been converted into a small supermarket, owned by a middle-aged man who, in a fit of a midlife crisis, decided that he had always wanted to run a small supermarket in his slightly rundown neighborhood. The business was decent, but it wasn't enough to keep the man's family fed, so he hired a partner after two or three years to help him get things moving again. The new partner, going through a midlife crisis of his own, decided that the building should just be reconverted to the strip club that it had been years earlier. The other man complied, and Love Planet was reborn, rebuilt, and restored to its former glory.

Years later, as the neighborhood continued to fall into characteristic disrepair, Love Planet continued to prosper, and while it was still little more than a glorified strip club it was the _nicest_ strip club in the city, thank you very much. It wasn't a fancy one, and the girls certainly weren't the top-dollar whores you saw on the arms of the richest men in town, but it had strange charm, hot girls, and a great bar. What more could a guy ask for?

That was why Dante was spending his Valentine's Day at Love Planet. He had realized recently that he hadn't gotten laid in a really long time, and was currently attempting to improve those chances. Somehow, bringing home some girl when Trish was living with him hadn't felt appropriate or in any way considerate to his partner, particularly when she had been fairly straightforward from the beginning about her feelings for him. Besides, she went just about everywhere with him, so what was he going to do, drag her into some bar so she could watch him pick up a chick?

No, instead they went to the usual joints—his favorite places, the places he had been going to for years and years. Trish, despite her desires to go out and integrate with other people, tended to feel uncomfortable in situations with other people, running her fingers along the edge of her glass and being uncharacteristically shy as Dante conversed with whatever waiter or bartender was serving them. She didn't speak to anyone unless they started talking to her, and even then it took some coaxing to get anything but answers to questions out of her. As a result, Dante avoided going out with her, choosing to get takeout from somewhere so as to avoid the discomfort of being in a public place with her. It was easier on both them.

Fuck but that made him feel callous. He loved Trish—as a friend, he insisted—but she was clingy and dependent and made it impossible for him to enjoy the company of other people. Of course, she was the confident woman he had met a little over a year ago, but it was only in private. In public, she hid in plain sight, choosing not to speak, or to simply interact in the way she thought she was supposed to interact. Why did she refuse to see that people could like her if she gave them the chance?

It didn't matter anymore. Suddenly Trish had spouted out this long spiel about her need to feel human when she clearly wasn't human—yeah, fine, maybe she was a demon, but it's not like people noticed, or even treated her differently. Suddenly she couldn't deal with him, couldn't deal with his kindness or his attempts to make things easier for her or anything. And suddenly she was gone, what little she had all packed up and out the door with her. Said she needed to go off on her own. If she was afraid of talking to waiters when he was sitting there and holding her hand, how could she handle being with people who didn't even _know_ who or what she was, and who would probably shoot her if they found out?

"You okay there, honey?" a girl asked, snapping him out of his trance. She was a curvaceous girl with red hair that had probably been dyed that color, and she was currently dancing for him.

"Just thinkin'," Dante responded, taking another sip of the J&B in his hand as his eyes once again focused on her body.

* * *

_I-70, approximately 923 miles away from Devil May Cry_

Trish kept her eyes on the road. It wasn't that the man in the driver's seat was weird—not at all, he was actually pretty nice, albeit quiet—it was because she was entranced by the sight of grassy fields whizzing by her in the dying sunlight. It was a view she was fairly used to at this point after three weeks of traveling around the country by car, but something about today's sunset in particular seemed rather lovely, despite the fact that the light was hitting a rather featureless landscape.

She hadn't said a word to the man driving her in over an hour. To be honest, she never really spoke to the people she hitched a ride from, which was counterintuitive seeing as her plan was to meet people and learn to feel comfortable around strangers without Dante to sit there with her and lead the conversation. At the very least she would sit while they spoke to her, unloading their various problems on her somewhat willing ears. She felt as though she were learning more about the human mind in these slice-of-life glimpses she was getting of other people. This driver, however, hadn't said a word either.

They had passed Topeka at this point—or so the sign said—and Trish had stared at the same landscape for about twenty minutes when the driver finally spoke: "Where 're you headed again?" he asked.

Here was a conversation they had had before, when she had first stood on the bank near the entrance ramp of some random highway back in Kansas City. He had pulled over to make sure she was okay, and she had asked for a ride. To where?

"Wherever you're headed," Trish answered. It was the same answer she had given him then. "Denver," she added. That's what _he_ had answered, but now she was the one saying it. Apparently, that was where she was going next. Why not?

The driver drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, not even looking at her. That was one thing she liked about this man: he didn't stare at her like some of the other men she had driven with did. This surprised her, because ordinarily she would have felt offended by the fact that he didn't seem to find her attractive when she obviously was, but instead she felt comfortable. Somehow, she liked the sensation of not having eyes on her at all times—even Dante did it, not in a lustful way, but just _watching_. Now she could watch their surroundings, and notice the sun set ahead of them, the light turning the dull grass vibrant with rich orange hues.

Still, it seemed that, over an hour later, the man was starting to second-guess his decision to pick up a stranger who wanted to go wherever he was going. "Do you know anyone there?" he suddenly asked. He was probably imagining her tricking and killing him on a lonely stretch of road.

"I don't know many people _anywhere_," Trish admitted, and immediately wondered why she had divulged that bit of information.

"Not even back in Kansas City?" The man looked at her curiously, for a second longer than would have been safe given the fact that he was driving, before catching himself and looking back towards the road.

"I'm not _from_ Kansas City," she continued. Nor did she want to be—no offense to the city, because it seemed nice enough, but she didn't quite mesh with it. She had only ended up there because she had gotten this funny sensation that told her to go west from St. Louis rather than south. And she was restless, anyway, and hadn't stayed in the same place for longer than a few days since she had started this pilgrimage of sorts three weeks earlier.

"Where _are_ you from?" he asked, probing for more information.

Trish thought back to Devil May Cry and the white-haired man she had left behind, who was probably sitting at his desk and reading a magazine. Did he even miss her? "I'm not from anywhere," she answered, and then realized that her words were very cryptic and probably a bit creepy. Glancing back at the man, she was surprised to find that he was half-watching her, half-watching the road, but his gaze didn't seem scared—merely curious, almost concerned. "It's not what it sounds like," she promised, not even sure what it sounded like herself. "It's nothing."

"I'm ... sorry about the third degree," the man apologized, still half-focused on her and half on the road. "I've never picked up a hitchhiker before, and I'm not really sure why I did in the first place... Didn't mean to upset you."

"I'm not upset," Trish assured, and she wasn't lying. Why would she get upset? After all, she wasn't from anywhere exactly, except perhaps Mallet Island, and that definitely wasn't an acceptable answer. Besides, she had come to terms with the fact that she was different—different, even, from Dante, and that had been her motivation to go off on her own in the first place.

There was another minute of silence before the man offered: "I'm Charles. Call me Charlie."

"Trish," she answered, offering him a smile in lieu of a handshake. He was driving, after all.

"Nice to meet you, Trish," Charlie said, returning the smile. Facing the road again, he squinted slightly—the sun's rays were starting to peak under the bottom of the sun visor. "Mind passing me my sunglasses?" She complied, handing him a plain black pair of sunglasses that were resting in the cup holder. "Nice sunset we're having," he added. "Think it's because it's Valentine's Day?"

Valentine's Day. Strange holiday if you asked her, but she understood the sentiment. She had just never really experienced it. "Might be," she responded neutrally.

"Oh, don't tell me you're not a fan of Valentine's Day!" Charlie protested, making another incredulous sound when she shrugged. "Beautiful woman like you? Must have a ton of guys who want to spend Valentine's Day with you."

"Like you?" Trish asked. Not that she was interested. Oh, he wasn't unattractive—his brown hair was nicely coiffed so she could see his youthful-despite-being-at-least-thirty features. Nice-looking guy; she just wasn't on the market.

He laughed lightly. "My partner wouldn't like that very much." When Trish didn't respond, he added, for good measure: "I'm gay."

Oh. Well, that explained why he didn't stare so much.

Charlie was perfectly still, shoulders stiff as he waited for her to comment. "You don't ... mind, do you?" he finally asked, his voice hesitant and words careful.

Trish smiled. "Why would I?" And it was true. Who was she to judge someone for being different, anyway?

He laughed lightly. "Okay, just wanted to make sure." He shifted in his seat, apparently more comfortable now that he knew she wasn't disgusted by him. Would he be disgusted by her if he knew what _she_ was, she wondered? "Ray is mad enough as it is. He told me not to go to Kansas City for this business meeting because I wouldn't be there for Valentine's Day, but I _had_ to. Want to get on good standing with the boss." He smiled. "Anyway, I'll make it up to him. Big, special romantic thing this weekend. No idea what to do yet." He glanced at Trish really quickly. "Got any ideas?"

Well. Last year she had spent Valentine's Day watching college basketball with Dante and drinking beer, and when she had leaned in to kiss him, thinking that this is what people did on Valentine's Day, he had just sat there without responding. He had been the one to apologize and not her—she had turned away, hurt. He had told her that he was simply trying to figure things out, which she had interpreted as: "I've only known you for three weeks and you still look too much like my mother, but to be honest I don't know if I'd _want_ to, even after enough thought." She had gotten over it eventually, and even later gotten over _him_, or at least she thought she had. Hoped, even. It was hard not to look back on her first and only friend in the human world without at least a little bit of affection.

Regardless, she didn't know much about what Valentine's Day was supposed to be about, except for chocolates and flowers and the other things that she had seen advertised. And somehow, she got the sense that he wasn't looking for that. "What does he like?" she asked instead, figuring it was enough of a non-answer to distract from how little she knew about Valentine's Day and romantic things.

"He's pretty low-key," Charlie answered, leaning back slightly to stretch his back a bit. "Last year we just went to dinner at our favorite restaurant—year before we cooked ourselves. We were never into doing the big gushy thing, but..." He looked at Trish and smiled the most loving smile she had ever seen. "We've been together almost three years now, and I don't see it ending any time soon. If ever. I want to do something _special_ for him, you know?" He looked back to the road and cocked his head to the side, stretching his neck. "I just don't know how to do it."

"I'm sorry I can't be more helpful," Trish answered sincerely, a little touched by Charlie's sentiment. "Never really did the whole romantic thing. The man I used to live with? He was a bit of a recluse. His idea of fun was sitting around and hanging out, and his idea of _special_ fun was going out to a bar or getting a table at the Chinese takeout place." She shook her head, laughing a little at Dante's expense. Charlie, to her left, snorted as well. "Nice guy, but still. You could tell her cared about you, but he hid it so that it didn't look like he did until you were in trouble, at which point he would come running to your rescue and generally overreacting."

Charlie laughed again. "The way you talk about him... Is he your ex?"

Trish shook her head. "Roommate and business partner. He wasn't interested." She sighed and leaned back in her seat. "Great at flirting, but when it came to romance he was emotionally unavailable."

"I'm ... sorry."

"He should be the one apologizing, not you," Trish corrected. "Makes me wonder how his previous partner put up with it. He swears that nothing happened between them, but he definitely was interested in her, and ... I don't know, it's hard to be around Dante and not feel _something_." Ahead of them, the sun had just set, and everything seemed red like the heart decorations that were hanging in every store. "He means it—making you feel special, that is. Just not in the way that you'd like."

She turned to look at Charlie, who was staring forward, his face guilty. He was still wearing his sunglasses, though he wouldn't need to anymore. She almost wanted to reach over and take them off herself, but reminded herself that this man was still technically a stranger. Suddenly, she realized that she felt so comfortable around this man—comfortable enough to actually talk to him, to have a real conversation. The fact that she was a demon didn't play into it at all; a bit, perhaps, in terms of her highly edited backstory, but there she was, talking to this man, person to person. Human to human.

"What's it like?" she suddenly asked him, still watching the red light dance across his face. "You and ... Ray, is it?"

"That's right," Charlie answered, glancing at her and relaxing a bit.

"What's it like being together?" Trish continued.

"Don't you know?" he asked her, once again half-watching her and half-watching the road.

"I've never really been in a relationship," she admitted, looking forward again.

Charlie took off his sunglasses, once again revealing charming brown eyes. "I have a lot of trouble believing that, Trish."

She laughed, and found that it was genuine. "There are a _lot_ of things you wouldn't believe about me."

"Like what?"

"Just take my word for it," she said almost dismissively, but her voice was still warm. "Tell me about you and Ray. Tell me _everything_."

Charlie smiled and looked back at the road. Trish, sensing that he was going to speak, leaned back and relaxed, preparing herself to listen and soak in everything she could. After all, why not learn about something that, despite everyone expectations, she had never experienced?

What she might never experience...?

"We met ... three years ago, when I went to the ER to get stitches..."

* * *

_Love Planet_

Angie, or so she called herself, had a scar on her inner thigh. It wasn't big, and it had long since faded, but to the hand running across flesh it was a rupture to what was otherwise smooth, a sudden reminder that the woman straddling his waist was actually human and had a life beyond stripping and sexual acts in the back room.

Dante's eyes shot open and he pulled away from the mouth of the girl who had probably once been a blonde before dying her hair red, staring into muddy blue eyes. "Where'd you get that?" he asked plainly, not even bothering to gesture or even glance at the scar he was referring to.

Angie briefly shot a look that read: "Jesus, is another person asking me this?" before the suggestive look returned and she attacked his ear with her lips. "Don't worry about it. Fell climbing a fence when I was a teenager," she whispered into his ear.

Dante didn't move this time, allowing her instead to have her way with him. "Had a friend with scars on her legs too," he heard himself say.

"Mmm," Angela hummed in half-interest, her mouth moving to his neck as her hands resumed their path over his abdomen, this time dipping past the waist of his pants.

"You only have one scar, but she had a bunch," he continued, unsure of why he was still speaking, though suspecting that it might have had to do with keeping his cool under her experienced hands. "All over. Jagged ones. Must have been from when she was younger and didn't know what she was doing, because she didn't really get any more when we worked together." He sighed. "Wonder what she's doing."

Angela suddenly squeezed, and the pleasant pressure caused him to lean his head back. "So what?" she asked, not rude so much as she was dismissive. "You're with _me_ now. Enjoy yourself."

Her mouth dipped back to his and he complied, one hand resting on the small of her back and the other tangling itself in her hair.

* * *

_Café Lola, two miles away from Devil May Cry_

Her waitress had a long French braid, which started just above her right ear and curved along her skull before cascading down the center of her back like a normal braid. For a moment, Lady wondered if she should grow her hair back out again as it had been when she was much younger, before she had impulsively cut it in her early teens. She then realized that it was a stupid thought on top of being inconvenient for work, and decided not to.

She sighed and looked away from the retreating back of the waitress, instead unwillingly returning to the book in her hand. Armand was on the train, staring intently at young miss Gillian Goodwin, a lovely young thing of twenty-three who was voyaging through Italy in an attempt to forget her _dreadful_ ex-boyfriend Robert. She was the protagonist of this tale, and Armand would likely be her love interest, as they were only thirty-one pages into the book and Gillian would certainly not end up with Robert again, the bastard.

Still, Lady could see where this was going: there would be a torrid love affair between Gillian and Armand, at first slow because she was still a virgin, but eventually it would get hot and heavy. She would be torn, unsure of whether she wanted to stay in Positano or wherever with her darling Armand or return to the United States to her family. Something would compel her to leave—maybe she would be deceived into believing that Armand had cheated on her with a saucy Italian woman through a comedy of errors—and she would return to the United States in tears where Robert, who had gotten far too much description to be abandoned after the first seventeen pages, would try to make a move on her again. And sure, she would return to Robert out of loneliness, but Armand would follow her to the United States, profess his undying love, perhaps beat up Robert, and finally Armand and Gillian would live happily ever after, the end.

Okay. Well. Back to the train in Italy.

"_You are traveling alone?" Armand asked, the words rolling off of his tongue in a silky smooth tone, about as silky smooth as his dark hair was, pulled back by a small hair band. He smiled a confident smile, white teeth flashing, white as his shirt that was stretched taut over a well-built abdomen._

"_Yes," Gillian answered, tone betraying her nervousness. She was panting lightly due to the heat of the Italian day—cursing, in her mind, the broken air conditioner—but still wondered if it were perhaps due to the sheer _presence_ of the man in front of her._

"_It is ... unsafe for a woman to be traveling alone," he continued, and his words were particularly charming through that delightful Italian accent, "particularly one as beautiful as you." He smiled again, wider this time, and Gillian felt simultaneously safe in this man's presence, and endangered._

"_You could keep me company, if you'd like," Gillian proposed, lifting her hand to lay it on her chest and feeling her bosom heave up and do—_

"Oh this is _ridiculous_," Lady muttered under her breath.

She closed the book and placed it on the opposite corner of the table, as far away from her as possible. The title, _Afternoon Train to Salerno_, shone up at her in brilliant white text, and Gillian and Armand, wrapped in an agonized lover's embrace on some beach on the Amalfi Coast, seemed to beam proudly. "You were witness to the beginning of our torrid love affair," they seemed to say, "and now you want to continue to read, because you will never truly be happy until you know what happened to us beautiful lovers."

"No," Lady hissed, flipping the book over so she couldn't see the cover. Instead, a picture of the author stared back up at her, trying to look like an intellectual under a mop of unruly brown curls. "_Never_ publish another book," Lady added, covering the book with a nearby copy of _The New York Times_ so Kimora Clarkson couldn't stare ponderously back at her.

She wasn't sure what had inspired her to pick up a romance novel on Valentine's Day—much less buy one, and she immediately missed the $14.95 she had spent on that piece of shit—but at least it had brought her out of her apartment. Her original plan had been to spend the day in her apartment minding her own business, but something had drawn her outside, into this café a few blocks away from her apartment, cheesy romance novel in hand. She had never set foot inside of Café Lola before, but had always noticed that it looked like they had a nice selection of tea, and she hadn't had a nice cup of tea in years.

Good, loose-leaf tea, served in individual pots with little metal strainers, to be drunk out of a china teacup with a saucer. The way she and her mother used to have it.

Valentine's Day, to her, was about familial love. This is what she had insisted when spending that holiday with Dante during their years of partnership—it was a time for her to admit that, yeah, she liked spending time with the lug despite herself. They never really did anything special, or at least nothing that they did on any other day, but to her, every moment, every action was laden with the notion that she was lucky to have a friend.

Maybe Dante had assumed that it was a bullshit excuse to avoid the romance card, but it was anything but: Lady's fondest memories of Valentine's Day had been spent with her mother and father but mainly her mother, spending time together as a family, or as mother and daughter, because they loved each other. She lived for morning wakeups, her mother gently nudging her awake—and her father, when he had been there, standing behind her with a proud, affectionate smile on his face, one hand on his wife's shoulder. There would be a card, and a small present like a Barbie doll or some other toy, as well as a small, heart-shaped box of chocolate. More importantly, there was the promise of the day's activities, whether that same day if Valentine's Day fell during the weekend, or the next Saturday.

They did anything and everything. Sometimes it was a movie, kid's movie when she was younger and a chick flick when her mother felt she was old enough. Sometimes it was a manicure and pedicure—and that was the only day, other than her birthday, that she was allowed to get a pedicure, and her nails would always be pink. Hot pink as a child, and a soft or neutral pink or, if she was daring, red in her teens. When she was twelve she and her mother went to a spa, where she got a facial and a foot rub while her mother got a full, deep tissue massage.

Her father usually didn't partake in the day's activities with her and her mother, but would join them for tea when they got home. Her mother had always been a big fan of tea, whether black or red or green or white. On Valentine's Day they drank Assam blended with almond and vanilla, which was always better with milk and sugar—even her father agreed, and he _always_ took his tea with lemon.

The rest of the day would be spent relaxing, eating dinner, and generally avoiding work or homework when it could be avoided. She had always gone to bed with a sense of utter contentment. It was, arguably, her favorite holiday.

The first Valentine's Day after her mother's death had obviously been the hardest one. They were all hard, really, but the first one left her feeling so lonely that she even wished that her _father_ were there. It never really got better from that point on—Lady simply got used to the feeling of loneliness. She never really set out to replace it with more company, but instead with work. After all, how could Lady fill a holiday that she so strongly associate with the bonds of family?

The fact was that Valentine's Day was never a holiday Lady had spent with men in a romantic sense—excepting those few years of working with Dante. She had dated in her early twenties, but her boyfriends didn't know how to deal with her erratic schedule and unconventional profession and had left her out of frustration, and as a result she had always ended up single by Valentine's Day. They had all seemed so strangely offended too, despite the fact that some of them had only been in it for the sex, as if her job were a direct attack on their relationship. As if she hadn't told them from the start that she went out and killed demons for a living. Honestly, she could come up with a million reasons why she had been a terrible girlfriend, and a million more for why they never should have tried dating her in the first place, but none of those were: "You're too busy hunting demons to have sex with me."

Dante was the only one who understood her because he was in the business himself, and the closest thing she had to a new family when her old one had been forcibly ripped away from her. He reincarnated Valentine's Day, helped her at least begin to fill it with the meaning that it had lacked for years and years. But while he was the most human demon she had ever had the misfortune of meeting, Dante was Dante and, as such, complicated. That was exactly why she had told him, one day, that she wanted to work on her own for a little while, and that she would decide whether or not a continued partnership was advisable upon her return.

That was ... God, that was over two years ago at this point, wasn't it? At first she had simply been in and out of town, taking jobs in other cities around the country to get a breath of fresh air—then she was back in town, but she never called him, never visited him, never bumped into him... Perhaps it was for the best, she felt the need to remind herself. She would talk to him again when she was ready.

Valentine's Days, for the past two years, had been spent alone, much like the ones before those with Dante: searching for things to do in the absence of others, trying to forget what it was like to spend the holiday with family and friend but mainly with family. Not alone. Maybe she had picked up the romance novel out of a desire for change, to feel more connected to that sense of what Valentine's Day was supposed to be—not out of disdain for familial love, but because she knew that she would never obtain it again. Not the way she had known it as a child, and not when she felt as distanced from people as she currently did.

Lady drained the last of her Darjeeling with lavender and, having already paid, gathered up her phone and newspaper to leave. Her trashy romance novel, once again revealed to the light, shone with words such as "a must-read" and "her best yet!" Sighing at her own weakness, she grabbed the book and wrapped it in her newspaper, perhaps so that no pedestrians could see what kind of crap she was reading, much less realize that Lady actually gave a damn about what happened to Gillian and Armand.

She imagined the little picture of Kimora Clarkson laughing triumphantly as she exited the café.

* * *

_Outside of Devil May Cry_

Angie was laughing, though why Dante didn't know. Perhaps it was because she had gotten picked up by the hottest customer at Love Planet—which was definitely true. Or perhaps it was because she knew she was about to get laid—also true. But Dante didn't have the energy to laugh with her. All he needed on Valentine's Day was a good, fun fuck, and he was about to get one, but he didn't feel like celebrating that fact with the girl he was about to spend the rest of the night with.

"Devil May Cry?" Angie asked, clutching his arm tightly. "Funny name."

He had changed it back after Trish had left. "Devil Never Cry" had filled him with a kind of unease that he never quite shook during the year that it held that name, and found that he was quite relieved to change it when he finally did. And it had nothing to do with Trish—or Lady, for that matter. He simply liked the old name more.

"Don't think about it too hard," Dante assured her, leading her up the stoop to his front door. He wasn't sure if she knew what he did—couldn't remember. He hadn't paid attention half of the time anyway, even when she was pleasuring him. He had enjoyed it, he guessed, which was why he was bringing her home for more, but had he, really?

Devil May Cry was all he had at this point. For the past twelve years the shop had been his home, source of income, place to hide, everything. He measured distance in related to how far it was from Devil May Cry—one block, one mile, too close, too far—and how long it took to get there. Love Planet was three blocks away, a walk that took four minutes at a leisurely pace and two and a half if he walked quickly. Hunan Palace was around the corner, so less than a minute to get there, tops. Lady's old apartment was twenty-nine blocks away and took ten minutes to get there on motorcycle—he never walked there.

He would say that it was time for a change, but it wasn't. Things didn't change for him. Circumstance simply added things that could be stripped away, and the core would remain the same.

Inside, the building was dark, the air smelling lightly of takeout from various restaurants. Angie didn't seem to mind, if she even noticed: she was far too busy running her hands over his chest again, feeling his muscles through the fabric of his shirt. She was standing on her toes again, a pretty useless move because her heels were very high in the first place, and pressed her lips to his collarbone, her breath tickling his jugular notch. His arms instinctively wrapped around her body, settling in a comfortable spot at the small of her back.

"Where's your bed?" she whispered. She didn't beat around the bush.

He didn't answer, instead clasping the hand that was tracing his pectoral and, nudging her out of the way, lead her upstairs. His footsteps were oddly quiet compared to hers, and he wondered why he was being so quiet when there was no one else there to bother with their noise.

It had been a year and a half since he had last had sex. He hadn't brought anyone home when Trish was living there, much less go out to a club to pick someone up. He had only done it occasionally when he was working with Lady; she didn't live at Devil May Cry, but still didn't do it much because he didn't want to offend her. But no, she didn't care, why would she be offended? It had simply been out of strange respect for her.

He thought he had gotten over the urge for anonymous sex, but after Trish left he realized that he hadn't gotten over it so much as he had buried it. Sex was sex: it didn't matter if he knew the person or not, if he loved the person or not. As long as he was getting some, he was fine. He didn't _need_ love on Valentine's Day—neither Lady's stubborn platonic love nor Trish's uncertain romantic love—he just needed the sex.

So as he led Angie to his bedroom and allowed himself to be pushed down onto the bed to watch her strip—something that wasn't too exciting because he had already seen her do that earlier—he told himself that he had simply become the person he had been before. He was young Dante again, going out and partying, picking up hot chicks and fucking them, acting without fear of consequence because there was nobody to scold him or judge him or be hurt by him, living in the moment because there was no future for him. Not when being the Son of Sparda demanded a lifetime of service.


	5. Dante's Birthday, 1992

Oh shit I forgot how _short_ February was! Curse deadlines for catching up to me so quickly! I may or may not be running late with the next chapter (St. Patrick's Day) because I have finals these next few weeks, and I'm aiming to finish my research paper for that day so I can relax for two days before proofreading and submitting it. There's a chance that I might be writing the chapter on the flight home for spring break, which looks like it'll be the 19th of March. So I apologize for the assumed delay!

Anyway, this chapter doesn't have Trish and Lady in it and is pure Dante development, so I apologize to those of you who have been enjoying the relationship between the three of them. I promise, the St. Patty's chapter will be fun for you! Meanwhile, if you're hankering for some Lady and Trish, you can go check out _The Passage of Time_, which will be updated in a few days. It's DxL if you like that sort of thing, but Trish is going to play a big part in the next few chapters.

This chapter doesn't really adhere much to the manga—I mean come on it wasn't even finished anyway—for the purposes of a better chapter. (Likewise, I'm kind of ignoring the events on the anime on this one and sticking just to the four games. Sorry if you're a fan of both!) But, to my credit, fussing around with things means that we get VERGIL. And who would complain about that?

That is all.

(Oh wait, PS: this chapter, FYI, takes places over a year before Temen-ni-gru.)

* * *

**Observance**

_Birthday: Dante_

_March 6__th__, 1992_

11:57 PM, and he was standing in an empty parking lot by an abandoned factory on the outskirts of the city. This was, in his opinion, one of the worst places to be three minutes before your eighteenth birthday, particularly when he could be at Love Planet instead with tits in his face, but it would be worth it, he figured.

A part of him wondered if Vergil had given it much thought when he had told Dante to meet him "at midnight in three days," because if there wasn't something strangely symbolic about truly seeing his brother for the first time in nine years—excluding, of course, their brief encounter three days earlier—at midnight on their birthday, then he would stab himself with that fucking memento sword his father had given him. Particularly that birthday in particularly, the crossroads between kid and adult; and he wondered whether or not demons placed weight on turning eighteen as well.

Enzo had called up Dante half a week ago, demanding to know why his sources were telling him about a white-haired kid skulking around graveyards. It had taken fifteen minutes to convince Enzo that he had nothing to do with it, and fifteen more to realize that he had never actually seen his brother's body. So he had started skulking too, hitting up graveyards to confirm his hopes that, perhaps, his brother had been alive.

And it had only taken two days to do so. Vergil—he _knew_ it was Vergil; his hair was slicked back like he always used to do—had shown up when this weird statue in a crypt had woken up and attacked Dante. Dante was knocked aside; Vergil came in like some fucking knight in shining armor, swiped his sword, said some shit that Dante didn't hear, and the statue had smiled and crumbled to dust.

What now, Vergil: Exorcist?

Dante had said his name, tone betraying all of the hope that he placed in the other's answer. Years ago, he had resented Vergil for being the older one, the stronger one, the self-proclaimed "protector" of his younger twin despite the fact that _Vergil_ was the one picking the fights with Dante and not the neighborhood kids. Now he didn't care—he would let Vergil rescue him from demons for the rest of his life, however long that would be, as long as it meant that he had been alive all this time and not dead like he had previously thought.

The other didn't respond, instead slicing his sword through the air, sending thick black drops of what was probably demonic blood splattering to the floor. "Dante," he finally said, and didn't bother turning to face him as he spoke—not that Dante needed to see the face to know that it was identical to his own. "Do you know the abandoned factory on the southern outskirts of the city?"

"Vergil," Dante repeated, this time awestruck instead of inquiring. "Where—"

"Meet me there," Vergil continued, ignoring Dante's words, "in three days time at midnight. We'll talk then."

Then Vergil had jumped up and out of the crypt the same way he came, leaving Dante with a lot more questions than he had entered with, which included what Vergil had said to the statue though it was far from the top of the list. Dante suddenly found himself reconsidering the old theories that he had considered after his mother's death because, as he had recently realized, he had never seen his brother's body that day—he hadn't even heard his screams.

Of course, Enzo gave him a mouthful later that evening, his contacts apparently not all that happy about the destruction of the crypt by some white-haired kid. Dante had simply rolled his eyes.

"Dante," Enzo insisted, polishing off his beer and signaling the bartender for another round—and part of the joy of being friends with Enzo was that he could get into places without having to show any ID—"you've gotta understand that most people don't know about demons, and we'd like to _keep_ it that way. Mass terror and all? Sound like fun to you?"

"No," Dante answered petulantly, pushing around a small white napkin with his index.

"Exactly. It's our little secret. The few of us who do know about this kind of shit get the information, and we pass it along to the guys like you who take care of it. As long as people don't find out that the noises in the basement were some demons pounding around in there instead of just a family raccoons like they thought, then everyone's happy." Enzo nodded a thank you at the bartender, who had just returned with beers. "Got it?"

"I can't help it if shit gets messy," Dante protested. "Some statue woke up and started flipping the fuck out. I just happened to be there at the time."

"Yeah, because the people who got their family members buried in there are really gonna buy that one," the older man contended. "Look, I've been looking out for you for as long as you've been in this city, and I know you're not really a kid anymore but it don't mean you can stop listening to me. Besides, you're not eighteen for another three days."

"And I can't _wait_ until I don't _legally_ have to—" Dante stopped, Enzo's words sinking in. "_Three_ days?"

"Enjoy the youth while you got it, kid," Enzo responded, sipping his beer.

"Son of a _bitch_."

"What?" Enzo asked, putting the beer down. "What'd I say?"

Dante smiled, shaking his head. "Nothing. Don't worry about it."

* * *

Three days later, Dante showed up at the spot, three minutes early. He was always at least ten minutes late for things, something that he usually prided himself on, but the nature of this particular meeting prevented him from being as flippant as he usually was about being places. Vergil, conversely, had always been precisely on time. He always left exactly when he needed to and arrived exactly when he was supposed to be there. He had always been so precise and restrained as a child—it was hard to imagine that changing.

Dante had been plagued with questions for the past three days, questions like: if Vergil had been alive, why hadn't he tried to find Dante? Had he assumed that Dante had been killed as well, his body found dead next to Eva's? Where had he been those nine years? How had he survived? Why had he delayed their conversation for three days instead of greeting his brother immediately? Was he even _happy_ to see him? I mean, they hadn't always gotten along as kids, but they were _brothers_ damn it, _twins_ even, so they were supposed to care for each other at least to an extent. What was going on in Vergil's life that would necessitate a delayed reunion?

A figure suddenly appeared on the other side of the parking lot, and Dante didn't need to check what time it was to know that it was midnight, precisely.

"About time you got here!" Dante shouted as the blurry outline of his brother got sharper and sharper. "You didn't have to make me wait."

"I was precisely on time," Vergil responded, and despite the fact that he was still some distance away, it didn't sound like he was projecting. Another one of Vergil's bizarre talents. "I would say that it's you're fault for being early, but I'm surprised you are. You always did run late as a child."

"Anything for my big brother," Dante joked, though it was only half a joke and half the truth. A part of him resented how quickly he got back into the adoring brother mode when his older twin was—as usual—so restrained. It would be weird of him to run up to Vergil and give him a hug, but wasn't that what long lost family members were supposed to do when they were reunited? It had nothing to do with man-pride and everything to do with how weird their relationship had always been. If it wasn't something that they would have done even at age nine, then why would they do it now?

"It's good to see you again, Dante," Vergil said, stopping a few yards away from his brother. Despite the strange tone he had as he said it, Dante warmed slightly: Vergil had strange ways of enjoying situations. Always had. "I see your favorite color is still red."

"And yours blue." His brother's clothes were also made of what appeared to be very elegant materials. That was nice and all, but probably really inconvenient. Give Dante some durable leather any day and he would be happy. Red leather, preferably. That shit was _awesome_.

Vergil's favorite color wasn't the only thing that _hadn't_ changed in nine years: everything about Vergil was the same, or at least very similar to what it had been before. The only thing that had really changed was his appearance, and even then it was like changing his clothes, slicking back his hair, and looking into a mirror. Everything about Vergil was still pleasantly familiar, as if they hadn't been ripped apart and spent nine years away from each other, assuming that the other was dead. Seeing him again was strangely reinvigorating; Dante felt like he could kick ass and take names, and Vergil would be there next to him, helping.

"So Vergil," Dante said, casually, the word familiar and not foreign to a mouth that had grown unused to saying it, "were the three days just a coincidence, or did you plan that out?"

Vergil frowned. "What do you mean?"

"You know: 'Midnight in three days' or whatever the hell it was you said?" Dante asked, trying to push aside the strange feeling in his gut. "Were the three days ... I don't know, _random_?"

"It was the first available time for me to meet you," Vergil coolly explained as if Dante were the most dimwitted person in the world. "I've been very busy."

The feeling was definitely there, right at the solar plexus, traveling upward along his ribs so that it hurt to breathe. He wasn't sure why it hurt—and yet he knew exactly what was bothering him. "Do you even know what today is?" Dante asked, trying not to show too much emotion.

"No," Vergil answered, clearly annoyed. If Dante had been the one in those shoes, he would have made a half-assed guess like, "I don't know, Tuesday?" But Vergil was too direct to make a joke at a time like that, if at all. It would be a waste of time and breath.

"March 6th," Dante explained. "At midnight it became March 6th."

"So?"

The amazement of seeing his supposedly _dead_ brother again was starting to fade, leaving nothing but questions in its wake. For instance: "Don't you know what March 6th is?"

"No," Vergil answered, still managing to convey annoyance and disinterest at the same time. "Does it matter?"

Dante laughed—more of a bark than a laugh, but he was still laughing, even though it hurt. "It's our _birthday_, Vergil!" he exclaimed. "Where the fuck have you been that you don't remember your own fucking _birthday_?"

"Birthday?" Vergil sneered. "Demons don't pay attention to birthdays. We don't need to."

"Demons," Dante echoed. There was something altogether _wrong_ about the direction in which this conversation was heading. For starters, since when was Vergil ignoring things like birthdays because that's what _demons_ were supposed to do? Sure, they were demons, he _guessed_, but there were certain things that he couldn't ignore. "But you're _human_ too."

Vergil wrinkled his nose in what was probably disgust. "I choose not to be," he explained, and Dante noticed that his brother had barely moved during their talk—he had made slight head motions and facial changes, but still stayed more or less in the same rigid position, looking forward at his long lost twin without so much as a smile. "Why should I acknowledge a part of me that is weak when I can choose to be strong, instead?" Finally he smiled, but it looked more like he was baring his teeth. "Demons are strong. I choose to be a demon."

The chill hadn't subsided, instead spreading further. He had never realized that breaths could burn when his lungs were frozen. "Sorry for disagreeing," Dante said unapologetically.

Vergil snorted. "You always _were_ more attached to your human side, Dante." His arm moved so that his hand rested on the hilt of his sword—Yamato, that was the name—and Dante was glad that he had brought Rebellion with him as well. Somehow he knew that he would have to use it at some point that night, but he had hoped that it would be in a random ambush going to and from his home; or, if it had to be against Vergil, brotherly sparring rather than sibling rivalry. "Our mother's influence, I'd imagine."

"Could say the same for you," Dante responded. His legs itched out of a desire for movement, and he obliged, taking a few steps to his right. "You always liked _him_ more." Not that he had anything against their father—not at first, anyway—but Vergil was right: he had always been closer to their mother.

Vergil laughed this time, not bothering to mask his derision. "It sounds like you still haven't forgiven our father," he said, matching Dante's steps with some of his own.

"Why should I?" Dante asked, and he noticed that they were now circling each other. "_Everything's_ his fault. If he hadn't fucking _run away_—"

"He didn't _run_," Vergil corrected.

"Oh, then what happened?" Dante interrogated, waving his arms demandingly. "He just decided that he was gonna go for a walk and not come back?"

"I don't know, and I don't particularly _care_," Vergil answered shortly, a rare manifestation of his temper. "His flaw was his _weakness_. He should never have gotten so attached to humans: it made him soft. He was at his strongest when he didn't allow himself to be distracted with petty _humanity_, let alone some _woman_."

"You mean our _mother_," Dante snapped, and he abruptly stopped his circling to rush forward at Vergil, removing Rebellion from his back.

Vergil smirked, drawing Yamato but staying put. He finally moved when Dante was mere inches away from striking him, quickly parrying Dante's attack before making one of his own. Dante dodged the attack easily with a jump backwards, and yet another as Vergil spun and thrust forward again, blade aimed directly for the other's stomach. Dante tried to return the attack with one of his own, but Vergil moved too quickly, sidestepping Rebellion altogether while moving into Dante's blind spot to commence a barrage of attacks.

Vergil, Dante soon realized as Yamato bit the flesh of his arm, was very fast. Dante's attacks with Rebellion were faster, but Vergil moved quickly, almost as if he were appearing and reappearing from place to place, position to position, move to move; Dante barely had time to react before Yamato was bearing down on him again, using his own speed with Rebellion to block the attack before it cut down into his shoulder. The old familiar feeling of inadequacy was beginning to set in again: Vergil had always been a better fighter than him, surprising him with new moves and techniques that Dante would then learn before their next sparring session, just for Vergil to outdo him again. He had rarely won their fights as a child, something that had always frustrated him to no end. The subsequent temper tantrums often required Eva's soothing touch, sometimes blowing so out of control that Sparda himself was forced to interfere with a scolding glare and strong grip.

"You're just like father, Dante," Vergil hissed as he dodged one of Dante's blows. "Your humanity is your weakness."

Dante had a lot of trouble believing that he was, at all, like their aloof father. Sparda had always showed more favor to Vergil's skill as a fighter, where their mother had spent more time with Dante than with Vergil, whose unsentimental nature often attempted to avoid Eva's compassionate one. Of course, Vergil had still loved his mother—just as Dante loved his father, but Dante could never forget feeling as if Sparda preferred Vergil, and that he needed to fight for his father's attention with loud antics. None of Eva's soothing promises of how his father really loved him but just didn't know how to _show_ it fulfilled their purpose.

"And what's wrong with humans, anyway?" Dante countered, his voice straining as he swung Rebellion again.

"I would assume their weakness would be _enough_."

"Yeah, so?" Dante jumped backwards as Vergil lunged forward again with greater purpose. At least he felt like he was putting up a _fight_. "It's not just about strength."

Vergil laughed mirthlessly, faking a move to the left so he could attack Dante's unprotected right—Dante tripped over himself as he dodged and barely saved himself from a fall. Fatigue was beginning to catch up with him, so he stood in place for a moment to catch his breath.

Vergil seemed to humor Dante's need to rest, waiting, Yamato in hand, for the fight to resume. "I can't begin to understand the affection you feel for humans," he said, and Dante resented how unflustered he seemed. "Why is it you stand up for them?"

"Look," Dante started, leaning on Rebellion for support, "most people are assholes. But in case you haven't noticed, you and I are _also_ people."

"You, perhaps, but not _me_," Vergil once again corrected, and then lunged forward with Yamato aimed to strike. Dante barely had time to lift Rebellion from underneath him and parry Vergil's strike, nearly knocking away the older twin's sword. He took advantage of Vergil's slight instability to launch an attack of his own, which Vergil once again blocked.

"What is it, then?" Vergil asked as he charged with a flurry of slashes, of which Dante could block most but not all. "You want to have a human life for yourself?"

Dante managed to stop Vergil's sword with his next block, pushing him away and the two of them apart.

"Find yourself a beautiful human wife and raise some adorable almost-human children?" Vergil continued, slicing the air in front of him with Yamato.

Dante was stunned to feel the attack cut into his stomach, blood seeping out of the fresh gash. Fuck, since when could Vergil do _that_? There was another move that Dante needed to teach himself. Still, he felt himself sink, and quickly stuck Rebellion into the ground under him once more for support.

"You're a son of _Sparda_, Dante," Vergil finished, taking a few ominous steps towards him. "I hope you didn't think you could ever avoid that."

"Yeah?" Dante responded irritably. "What of it?"

"You have his _blood_. You could have his _power_." Vergil stopped mere feet in front of Dante, Yamato still unsheathed. "All you have to do is embrace your demonic side." He grinned maliciously. "But you didn't know that, did you? You remain blissfully unaware of your true potential because you don't want to accept the fact that you're a _demon_."

"That's _right_," Dante insisted, looking up at his brother petulantly. "Not interested."

"Hm," Vergil hummed, twirling Yamato in his grip. "Such a waste." And then he ran Yamato through Dante's stomach.

He'd heal, of course. This wasn't the first time Vergil had injured him really badly in a sparring session—the first had been at age five, when he had gotten that deep gash in his forehead from being pushed into a table. But by that point, he had already known that they weren't _like_ the other neighborhood kids, who would scrape their knees in the playground and cry and wear band-aids for a few days while the scratches healed. Dante and Vergil would hide their scratches from the other kids because they knew that they would heal in a few minutes, so there was no point in drawing attention to their strange ability.

"But I suppose that's what you do now, is it?" Vergil continued, pushing Yamato in even deeper. "You hunt demons—our own kind. And what, to help a bunch of pathetic humans? Where's your sense of _purpose_, Dante?"

Dante laughed, ignoring the blood that he spit up in doing so. "In case you haven't noticed, that _is_ my purpose," he explained. "With a small fee attached, of course."

Vergil smirked again, but it was different than the ones from earlier—in what sense, he couldn't tell. "I can't persuade you, then?"

"Not a chance," Dante answered, slowly feeling his energy coming back to him.

"Hm," Vergil hummed again. "I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree, then."

"I 'suppose' you're _right_!" Dante snapped, and his muscles twitched as they prepared to move, leap up and attack Vergil again.

Vergil must have felt or even _sensed_ the attempt at movement, because he quickly pushed the sword in further until Dante's chest hit the hilt, and then quickly pulled it back out. The motion sent Dante careening backwards, his back hitting the pavement and Rebellion falling just out of reach.

"I believe I have won the fight, Dante," Vergil calmly informed him, running Yamato along the top of the sheath to wipe off the blood before sheathing it.

"Won _nothing_!" Dante protested, propping himself up on his forearms, prepared to jump up and continue the fight. "It's not over ye—"

Vergil abruptly put his foot on Dante's chest, shoving Dante back to the floor and knocking both words and wind out of him. "Graciously accept your defeat," Vergil instructed. "You always _were_ a sore loser." He slowly removed his foot, probably testing to see if Dante would try to move again. When he saw that Dante had conceded, he finished the motion, standing on two feet once more and brushing off the sleeves of his blue coat. "Perhaps if you were to accept your demon blood and give way to its power, you could match me in battle."

"When I win, Vergil, it won't be because of _that_," Dante said, propping himself up again with a combination grimace and grin.

"Very well." Vergil nodded. "Until our next meeting. Do try to pose a challenge for me next time."

Then he turned and walked away, back in the direction from which he came. All of the questions that Dante had, in his anger, overlooked began to flood back, drowning him in his curiosity. He couldn't let Vergil leave _now_, not when they had lost nine years together; not when there was so much that was still up in the air.

"Hey," Dante called out, propping himself up a little more so he could reach Rebellion and use it as a crutch to stand. Vergil stopped, though he characteristically didn't turn to look back at his younger brother. In that instant, Dante wasn't sure what he wanted to ask—if it was about what he had done or what he was doing next—so instead, he said the one thing that he had wanted to, but hadn't been able to say in nine years: "Happy birthday."

Vergil turned his head, so that Dante could only see him in profile—and the profile was the part of his face that he never got to see. For once it wasn't like looking in a mirror with his hair slicked back, but seeing his older brother as a completely independent being, whether demon or human—demon, it seemed, to Dante's human. That was the one thing that had changed in nine years.

"You too," Vergil answered, and as he continued his walk into the night, Dante could only smile.


	6. St Patrick's Day, 2008

Okay, you know the drill. I = bad person who lies about when she's going to get chapters out. But you know, _Fable II_ is a good game! Also, it took me a long time to start this one because it didn't feel right, but I think I got it down this time.

You know, I approached this chapter with the intent of having this not being a depressing-ass chapter but one that's actually kind of fun. Of course, because it's _me_, Trish got a bit introspective and sad, but you know, I _tried_. Unfortunately this story (the overall story, not just the individual vignettes) is a lot sadder than I had planned when I wrote the Christmas one. I try to throw in some humor, but it always inevitably goes to this introspective place that I can't seem to avoid. Well, the rest of it is kind of light and funny, I think, so ... yeah!

Thanks again to all of the lovely reviewers, and I hope you enjoy this next installment!

(Oh, and for you folks who have been enjoying Trish and Lady's friendship, you're going to get a lot more of that today, and then even more only from Lady's perspective in the Easter chapter. It's going to be funtimes. I love these girls! This chappy also has some romance hints, but it's all complicated and funtimes YEAH.)

* * *

**Observance**

_Saint Patrick's Day_

_March 17__th__, 2008_

Three years earlier, when she was still out on the open road, Trish had spent St. Patrick's Day in Chicago. She had made friends with a couple of local college students—and to her surprise, all of them were women, which was a surprise given the fact that she had never had a female friend before then—and they were, as a group, roaming downtown Chicago when they came upon the Chicago River, which had been dyed green for the festivities. Until they had explained the tradition to her, she had thought the fluorescent green river was one of the strangest things she had seen, and she had seen rivers of blood without so much as batting an eye

She wasn't sure why that memory had come to mind for the first time in three years, but she suddenly felt compelled to share it.

"Do you know," Trish started, pausing to slug back a bit more Guinness—as Dante had decided that they would drink nothing but Irish beer, Irish whiskey, and Irish car bombs on Saint Patrick's Day. "Do you know that they dye the Chicago River green on Saint Patrick's Day?"

"They do? How?" Dante asked in amazement, leaning forward in his chair, which he had long since scooted closer to the sofa that she and Lady were sitting on. He also had a particularly dazed look on his face, which was probably a good sign given the fact that he had been knocking back drinks since about noon when he had woken up, and it was now 10 PM. It didn't matter if you were a demon or a human: after drinking as much as Dante just had, you _had_ to get drunk.

"With _dye_," Lady pointed out with a smirk.

"Didn't ask _you_, Lady," Dante responded, scowling half-heartedly. "Didn't even invite you over."

"Yes you _did_," she protested. Well, it was half-true, anyway: she had shown up at about 7 PM for the assumed evening's festivities, at which Dante had exclaimed something to the extent of: "I was just about to call you to tell you to get your ass over here!" Besides, Lady had a permanent invitation to any and all celebrations at Devil May Cry—even if she had to start it herself.

"With dye," Trish continued, as if the short argument between Dante and Lady hadn't just occurred. She shook her head; it felt good. Just how much had she drunk, again? "Lady's right," she added, hoping that the others hadn't noticed the effects that the alcohol was beginning to have on her.

"Told you," Lady boasted, taking another sip of her whisky.

"Yeah, well, that either makes you an expert on Saint Patrick's Day or on ... on dyeing rivers—which _obviously_ you do with dye, that wasn't what I was asking," Dante shot back.

"Then what _were_ you asking?" she asked, leaning back confidently.

"_How_ they do it," he proudly answered, and Trish bit back a laugh because that revision really didn't make the question any clearer.

"They do it _with dye_," Lady repeated, grinning at the frustrated look on Dante's face. "_Unless_ you were asking the _method_ in which they do it, in which case I don't really know myself."

"Hah, see, you don't know _shit_." Dante took a victory chug from his Guinness.

"Well, at least I already knew that they dyed the river green," Lady retorted. "You'd never even _heard_ of that tradition."

As Dante once again scowled, Trish decided to put the man out of his misery; after all, to her great pleasure, she knew the answer to his question. "They put the dye in containers and stick it on the back of a small boat, and then go up and down a stretch of the river until it's turned green," she explained, remembering how one of the girls, Farah, had described it. "And the dye is actually orange, but it turns bright green in the water."

"That's really cool," Lady admitted, smiling. Trish had noticed that Lady had these bizarre interests in the most random things, whether obscure and arcane or simply trivia. Lady often asked her about some of the places that Trish had traveled to a few years back, out of her own similar desire to explore the places she had never been—ironically, _Trish_ was the most traveled out of all of them.

One thing that she really liked about Lady was the brunette seemed to respect everything that she said. Come to think of it, their relationship was a strange one: Trish had given Lady a bit of a hard time a few years back when they had first met out of spite for the legacy that the other woman had left in her wake. But Lady had always tried to keep an open mind, trying to see in her what Dante saw in her, until Trish couldn't help but be nicer as well. Lady, she assumed, had seen in Trish a potential female ally against the leather-clad, testosterone-driven menace that was Dante, and to be honest, Trish often the same about Lady.

Besides, Lady's way of teasing Dante was a lot more fun than Trish's flirting-teasing had ever been. Flirting with Dante was awkward at times, a reminder that he had, in fact, rejected her.

"How long does it last?" Dante asked, apparently incredibly intrigued by the matter of the green Chicago River. It was funny: he didn't usually interest himself in things other than demons, hot chicks, weapons, fighting demons, babes, pizza, and guns. Dante wasn't a shallow guy; he just had his list of things that he liked, and if it didn't fall under one of those categories then he was more inclined to ignore it. Trish always thought it was really cute when he got fixated on something like this.

"The rest of the day, usually," she explained, aimlessly swirling the remaining liquid in her bottle, unsure of whether she was going to finish it. "Not sure what happens to the dyed water. It might just drain into the lake, but I don't know."

"Wouldn't the lake turn green then?" he continued prodding, his interest cutting through the haze of alcohol that had overwhelmed him.

"No, the dye would dissipate and disintegrate," Lady cut in sagely, pausing to take a sip of whisky. "Besides, the lake is huge, especially when you consider the fact that it's technically the same body of water as Lake Huron, let alone its connections to the other downstream Great Lakes. The tradition hasn't been going on long enough to dye that entire surface, if it were even possible." She took a pause while Dante and Trish regarded her in stunned silence before continuing: "Actually, the lake's retention time means that the dyed water wouldn't make its way towards the other lakes for a hundred years at least. It still doesn't mean Lake Michigan would turn green."

"What the hell?" Dante asked after another pause, dumbfounded—he would have been just as stunned on a normal day, but the alcohol certainly hadn't helped. "Buzzkill."

"Sorry," Lady apologized, sincerely embarrassed. _That_ was something she almost never showed. "I was a geography buff in school. I guess you don't forget some things."

"Were you trying to out-trivia Trish or something?" Dante was being perhaps a little more belligerent than was truly necessary, particularly given the fact that Trish didn't care who was "out-trivia-ing" who or whatever. "Trish, say something else that's cool to defeat Lady once and for all."

The way Dante retaliated against the feminine menace that had overtaken his life was not unlike the way that little boys would make fun of little girls simply because they were girls. Or so Lady had told her. If he had something either of them wanted, sometimes he would simply deny them it to watch them beg, which they pretty much never did. Or, in conversation, he would continue refuting them until they got frustrated, which they did do, much to their displeasure and his satisfaction. But more often than not he would try to pit them against each other, deciding which girl he would "support" and which girl was the "enemy," and try to goad each other into ... well, they weren't sure what the goal of that game was, partially because they had never played it.

"About what?" Trish asked. "St. Patrick's Day, the Chicago River...?"

"St. Patrick's Day," Dante clarified. "Since it's St. Patty's and all."

"Well..." Trish started, trailing off when she realized that she had no other trivia. She had only lived through four other St. Patrick's Days before this one, and it's not like she had gone to the library and read up on obscure trivia for the purposes of out-trivia-ing Lady in some stupid competition that Dante had invented for reasons that ... well, that Trish wasn't sure she wanted to comprehend. There was something about the situation that made her feel uncomfortable, but for the life of her she couldn't pinpoint what exactly. It must have been the beer. No more for her: she didn't particularly feel like completely losing her inhibitions at the moment. "I don't know," she admitted. "At least, I don't know anything that you wouldn't already know."

"Well I bet Lady doesn't have anything else to say," Dante said, as if that took Trish off of the hook. Yes it did, actually, but that was beside the point: she hadn't wanted to play his game anyway, and would have likely abstained from speaking even if she could come up with something. It all worked out.

"Lady is right here, and yes she does have something else to say," Lady snapped, a thoroughly exasperated look on her face. Quickly casting Trish an apologetic glance—an apology for out-trivia-ing her, she guessed—she added: "Ed Koch, who used to be the mayor of New York City, marches in the St. Patrick's Day parade."

"So?" Dante asked.

"He's not Irish, and he did it even after his terms ended," she explained. "He called himself Ed O'Koch and decided to march. Apparently everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day."

"'s true," he agreed.

"I don't know if he still does it or not, but for the longest time he would put on an Irish sweater and march in the parade. He's really old now, so I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't do it anymore." Lady sighed, almost haunted, and drained the rest of her whisky. "But _there_. There's your damn trivia."

Trish attributed her annoyance not to the fact that she had been out-trivia-ed, but because Lady had just succumbed to one of Dante's stupid games. Ordinarily Lady dismissed him with a roll of her eyes and wave of her hand, but this time she had let him get to her, for some reason giving up without much of a fight. Why? She was so much better than Trish at not indulging Dante's whims, so why had she yielded?

An awkward silence had settled over them—even Dante, Trish supposed, who hadn't imagined what he would do in the event that one of them had surrendered, or perhaps was too drunk to remember what he was supposed to do next. Lady was sitting quietly, in masterfully veiled shame, staring at her empty glass of whisky without much longing. Trish wasn't even sure how she was supposed to react having been simultaneously outdone and slighted by the woman that she saw as her ally, in a battle that they weren't even supposed to be fighting. They were _supposed_ to just brush him off as usual, talk to each other for a bit until Dante's demands for attention swelled to the point of desperation and they finally indulged him. _That_ was how it was supposed to have gone. _That_ was how they won.

"You want more?" Dante asked, finally noticing the fact that Lady was staring at her glass.

Lady's eyes shot up, a little startled, before replying: "Uh. No. I'm good."

"Trish?" he offered. "Done with that beer?"

"Oh, I'm done for tonight. No more for me," she responded, holding to her earlier promise. Besides, unlike Dante, she didn't like the idea of drinking to drown her frustrations.

"Ladies, you suck," Dante announced, standing up from his chair. "I'm getting another glass of whisky, if you change your minds."

Lady quickly stood. "Oh no you don't," she interjected, grabbing onto his arm. "You're done too."

"What?" Dante protested, turning on her and stumbling as he did it. "How am I done? I've only just started!"

"I think you should just go to bed," Lady instructed. "You're drunk. You're being stupid. You should just sleep this off, right Trish?" As Trish nodded in agreement, Lady added: "Not like you haven't been drinking since noon anyway."

"But it's ... it's only 9!" Dante protested, tugging against Lady as she pulled him towards the stairs.

"It's after 10," she corrected.

"Need any help?" Trish offered, standing as well. For some reason she didn't want to sit around by herself while other people were off doing things without her. Must have been the alcohol. Yeah, that was it.

Lady shook her head. "I've got it, thanks. You have to babysit him enough already; let me take care of it this time."

Just as Trish was about to respond, Dante tripped, stumbling forward and knocking both himself and Lady onto the stairs. Trish jumped forward to rescue Lady from underneath Dante, whose head seemed dangerously close to resting on her chest—no, it was. His head was definitely on her chest, and Lady looked dangerously close to punching him out.

"Dante, get off of me," she warned, lowly and quietly. The calm before the storm.

Trish grabbed onto Dante's shoulders and started pulling, but the bastard struggled against her, nuzzling himself further into Lady's cleavage. She would say that it was warranted given the incredibly low-cut white blazer that Lady had taken to wearing lately, but Trish still wanted Dante _off_ of her immediately, and his nuzzling into her made it even harder. "No," he insisted, his voice rich and amatory, much to Trish's horror.

And then Lady sighed. It was an annoyed, but strangely soft and affectionate sigh. It seemed to say: "Oh you stupid annoying excuse for a man, please never change," and Trish's horror only grew in response. She and Lady met eyes, and Lady seemed to almost be laughing—whether it was at her or at the situation Trish had no idea, but her eyes were laughing and it was apologetic and scathing all at the same time.

"Okay, _off_," Lady said after a pause, pushing Dante off of her rather easily with Trish's added help. Dante stumbled back into Trish's arms, and she nearly dropped him.

"Want me to bring him up?" Trish offered again, this time a little more insistent. Suddenly she couldn't trust Dante, and strangely enough she couldn't trust Lady either—but that didn't make any _sense_, and that bothered her immensely.

"No, sit," Lady instructed, grabbing a hold of one of Dante's arms and slinging it over her shoulder. The man dragged his feet as he left Trish's grip to lean against Lady. "It'll just be a minute."

Trish could only oblige, returning to the sofa with heavy steps. Sitting, she watched Lady walk Dante up the stairs until they disappeared on the second floor. The strange feeling in Trish's stomach intensified, but it had to be the alcohol. It had to be.

It wasn't.

Lady wasn't supposed to be interested in Dante. She _wasn't_, Trish reminded herself, but what had that been, then? Strange affection for a stupid friend? Trish wasn't supposed to be interested in Dante either—it was a lesson she had taught herself three years ago, when she was still out on the open road, spending her days in different cities and different parts of the country, seeing things that were bigger and more important than Dante.

Dante—who got drunk and stared up at the sky and suddenly, remembered the things that, through his stupid games, he tried to forget. More a boy than a man, and yet far too old for his thirty-four years, having seen too much and carrying too much weight.

Trish regarded him with the affection of the mother she wasn't, the friend she tried to be, and the lover she could never be—and she wasn't even sure whether she wanted or didn't want to be that for him anymore. Lady was his friend, and she held to that firmly, and yet deep down, perhaps his secret-but-not-secret affection for her had finally taken a hold in some way. Trish hoped not, because she didn't want to inevitably hold something against the woman that she saw as such a good friend.

"He's asleep," Lady announced as she walked down the stairs, snapping Trish out of her reverie.

"That was fast," Trish stated, and she wasn't sure what it meant, other than the fact that it was true. Maybe she had imagined Dante pulling her down onto the bed and—no, none of that.

"He passed out as soon as he hit the mattress," Lady explained, sitting down on the sofa next to Trish. "It's funny, when he's drunk, he's both a shitshow and not at the same time. I'm not sure what to think of it."

"Hm," Trish agreed, unsure of how to respond. Something was still stinging.

"Well, that's what I get for wearing a low-cut top, anyway," Lady continued amicably, leaning back casually. "Maybe I should wear a camisole with it to avoid situations like _that_ again."

"No, we _talked_ about that already," Trish scolded. "It looks better without the camisole; not just because you have nice boobs, but because the cut of the blazer seems awkward when you layer something underneath it."

"Right," Lady answered, nodding. Then, after a pause, she added: "You okay?"

Trish smiled reassuringly, trying to force the bad feeling away so the other woman wouldn't get suspicious. After all, Lady didn't know about Trish's on-again-off-again affection for Dante, and she wanted to keep it that way. "Just thinking."

"About?" Lady prodded.

Trish sighed, leaning back in her chair. Absently, she reached for the bottle of beer again, just to have something in her hand. "Calaveras," she lied, although it wasn't much of a lie because she started thinking about the park as soon as she mentioned it. "Those trees were magnificent."

"Giant sequoias," Lady absently added, perhaps imagining it herself. "I remember talking about them in my geography class."

"You ever been?" Trish asked.

"No." Lady laughed lightly. "I want to go, though." She turned to Trish with an excited look on her face, eyes lighting up again, though this time with a lot more enthusiasm than they had earlier. That was a good sign, at least. "Next time you decide to travel around the US, think I can tag along? I'd love to see everything I studied back in high school."

Trish shrugged. "Well, I was thinking that next time I would have to travel to the rest of the world," she admitted. It was something that she would have liked to do but couldn't because she didn't have a passport. Lady had explained citizenship to her at one point, and if Trish remembered correctly, she would be able to apply soon. "I think I might need to see Ireland."

"Yeah, St. Patrick's Day doesn't really do that culture justice," Lady agreed. "Fun as it is, you don't really understand what being Irish is all about by drinking Irish beer and Irish coffee. Oh, speaking of which, want to go grab an Irish coffee? One of my favorite coffee shops has a special tonight. It's in the neighborhood, so we don't have to drive."

"Sure, why not?" Trish stood and stretched, her limbs having sunk into the sofa a bit more than they would have normally. _That_ was the alcohol, for sure. And why not match that with a bit more? T'was the season.

"'Everyone's Irish on St. Patrick's Day.'" Lady repeated the expression as she stood, musing. "It's funny how many people celebrate who aren't even Irish."

"Are you?" Trish asked, heading for the door.

"Nope: Eastern European," Lady admitted, grinning widely. "But it's never stopped me."


	7. April Fool's Day, 2001

HEY LOOK, BEFORE APRIL FOOL'S COMES BEFORE EASTER! No this is not a joke. Although it is still April 1st where I am, so I win! Ha HA!

Another lighter-ish one. Dramarama is kept to a minimum in favor of some hurt/comfort funny fluff. I'm not sure what that means, exactly, but I just typed it. You'll see what I mean. By the way, welcome back to the time when Dante and Lady worked alone together.

(PS I'm 9 pages into the next chapter of _The Passage of Time_—I should be able to finish it on Friday, since I don't have class on Friday. No I haven't been neglecting it! I just got back from Spring Break before I could finish it, that's all.)

* * *

**Observance**

_April Fool's Day_

_April 1__st__, 2001_

It wasn't that she didn't trust him—

No, it was exactly that.

No, it—

Lady sighed tiredly and shifted her weight. She hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, having stayed up late chasing after a whole mess of demons in some factory an hour out of the city. By the time the last Enigma had been killed, she was ready to pass out, and had promptly gotten on her bike, driven back into the city, and fallen asleep immediately. Not that the sleep had been good; she had nightmares that night, but she didn't particularly want to think about them.

Instead, she stared up at the big neon "Devil May Cry" sign that was fixed above the entrance to the building. During the day it was always off, letting the daylight illuminate the building instead, but at night it was this big, bright beacon in what was otherwise a fairly sketchy neighborhood, glowing red like the Devil in question. She wasn't sure why, but the low hum of the neon sign was always oddly comforting despite the fact that it was distracting. It blocked out most other noise, so should she get attacked she would have had a harder time hearing the assailant coming. Still, she enjoyed letting the hum fill her ears and dull her senses, because despite the added danger she didn't feel unsafe.

Why that was, she wasn't sure, but she wasn't going to think about it because it was distracting her from the task at hand.

Surely Dante would have heard her motorcycle pull up, having gotten accustomed to the sound of her bike in the months of working together. Surely he wondered what she was still doing outside when she usually just pulled up and barged in. Did he assume that she was planning something, just like she was worried that _he_ was planning something?

Lady did not like April Fool's Day.

* * *

"There you are!" Dante exclaimed, sitting up in his chair and putting his feet on the ground. "About time you showed up."

Lady cautiously shrugged, looking around the room with suspicion. It didn't _look_ any different—it was just as dirty and cluttered as it had been yesterday. Yet again, if Dante were to try to prank her, would he be subtle or obvious about it? She had no clue.

Honestly, she wasn't sure why she was so convinced Dante would start an all-out prank war with her on April Fool's. She had never spent that day with him, so she didn't know from experience if he came up with ridiculous pranks with the aim of humiliating the prankee, but he certainly seemed the type to do so. He liked making stupid, immature jokes; she wouldn't put him past setting up stupid, immature _pranks_.

She just had to take it easy. Be cautious, of course, but not suspicious. There was no saying he would do anything, but it was best to be on the lookout for unusual behavior in his part.

"I got us coffee," Dante said, getting up and grabbing two cups from his desk that she hadn't even noticed before.

That set off some warning bells in her head, in part because she hadn't even _noticed_ the two cups on his desk—what else hadn't she noticed?—but also because he didn't usually go out and buy coffee, or drink coffee in the first place, or do her very many random favors in that vein. "When did you go?" Lady asked.

"Eh, maybe thirty minutes ago?" he answered, shrugging. "I rushed back to make sure that you didn't show up when I was out, but you made me wait anyway." He laughed and frowned at the same time, a face that she usually assumed meant that he was about to tease her about something or otherwise bust her balls. "Why'd you wait ten minutes before coming in?"

"Was it really ten minutes?" She was stunned: she knew that she had stalled for time out there, but she hadn't thought that she had spent ten minutes. Five at most, but not _ten_. "I got lost in thought, I guess," she said, and she wasn't lying. "Didn't realize ten minutes had passed."

"It happens," Dante responded, and then shoved the cup into her hands. "Here. Drink."

"Where did you get it from?" she asked, observing the cup from all angles. It looked like a plain coffee cup with an ordinary white plastic lid. But that didn't mean that it _was_ a plain coffee cup with an ordinary white plastic lid, nor did it mean that there was liquid inside and not a snake or something. She shook the cup lightly, and felt liquid sloshing around—okay, _fine_, but that didn't mean it was coffee. He could have peed in a cup.

"Deli two blocks away," he answered, watching her stare at the cup and test it. "You ever been there?"

"No." She opened the lid, flinching—and nothing but steam rose from the cup.

"It's actually pretty good," Dante continued, sipping from his own coffee. "They make a mean ham sandwich." Seeing that she was staring at the coffee hesitantly, he added: "Look, it's not from some frou-frou coffee shop, but it's good coffee. Watch, I'm drinking it." He took a long sip from his cup, and then looked at her pointedly.

It looked like coffee, and it smelt like coffee—good coffee, she had to admit—but was it _coffee_? Or, rather, was it _just_ coffee? Had it put something in it to make it taste awful, something that she couldn't smell? Okay, she had no idea what that might be, but Dante was _resourceful_; he could figure out how to pull that off. Or maybe he had put a laxative in her coffee, or a sleeping pill, or something to mess with her body.

But he was either a really good actor, or he genuinely was a bit disappointed that she wasn't drinking the coffee that he had just bought her. He wasn't being obvious, but there was a glint in his eye that let her on to his disgruntlement. And Dante was a terrible liar, so it had to be genuine.

She took a tentative sip. It tasted like coffee—a bit lukewarm at this point, but it was coffee. He had even put a bit of sugar in it. She didn't know how he took his coffee.

"Needs milk," Lady finally said, hoping to normalize the situation with a bit of characteristic semi-grumpiness—not that she was a particularly grumpy person, she just had a tendency to be a bit irate with him. Still, she offered him a slight thank-you smile, which she didn't plan on telling him was also a thank-you for not putting something weird in the coffee. She hoped.

Dante accepted the smile, reciprocating with one of his own. "Milk's in the fridge, if you want some," he offered.

And the horror returned. The _fridge_. Surely he had put something in there. There would be ... Vaseline on the handle, or the milk would be tainted or expired, or something would jump out of the fridge at her, or _something_, and she didn't want to be there to see what.

"Fine, I'll get it," Dante added, frowning, before retreating into the kitchen.

Lady suddenly realized that she facial had tensed and her eyes widened, her face the very image of terror. What was wrong with her? She kept on showing her hand today, and reacting very poorly to Dante's apparently good intentions. Still, something nagged at her, warning her that he was up to no good despite his friendliness. He was _Dante_ after all: a pompous, slightly flamboyant showboater who more often than not wore a shit-faced grin as he said something arrogant and occasionally lewd. Sure he was a decent guy when you got to know him, but he was so the guy who _lived_ for April Fool's Day, who as a kid hid frogs in beds and rigged things to fall on people, and as an adult still relished in making people jump, squirm, and blush. He _had_ to have something planned.

"There," Dante announced as he reentered the room, milk carton in hand. He had a moderately annoyed look on his face, the shit-eating grin unsurprisingly absent. "Do you still want it?"

"When did it expire?" Lady casually asked.

He glanced at the date on the carton. "It hasn't yet. What's going on?"

"What? Nothing," Lady lied. "I'm fine. There's nothing wrong."

"You haven't acted this way in a while, since before we started working together," Dante said, walking past her to put the milk carton on his desk and lean against the table. She half expected it to collapse under his weight and have him fall victim to a prank that he had set up for her. It didn't. "I mean, are you regretting this?"

"'This' what?" she inquired.

"This working together thing." Dante crossed his arms. "We were cool yesterday. It was a late night and kind of a rough job, but I didn't think it had pissed you off more than any other late-night rough job. And you shouldn't get pissed at _me_ over it."

"I'm not," Lady promised. "I'm just kind of tired, that's all." She didn't need to mention the fact that she was scared of him pranking her, because she didn't need to bring up trust issues when he seemed to be worried about the future of their partnership.

Dante smiled lightly, a smaller version of his shit-eating grin, and grabbed the milk from the desk. "If you're tired, the coffee will help," he explained, taking the cup from her hands. He took a large sip, draining some of the liquid in the otherwise full cup to make room for the milk before returning the cup to her hand. "Say when," he added, opening the carton and pouring the contents into the cup. It was plain milk.

* * *

The day was spent both making casual conversation and reading as they waited for someone to call with a job for them. Lady still flinched lightly at Dante's every offer, and had thoroughly examined the toilet when she went to the bathroom to make sure that there was no plastic wrap stretched across the opening or mechanism to make the water squirt back up at her. Dante, for the most part, ignored what she was doing, likely shrugging it all off as antics. If he suspected that it had to do with April Fool's Day, he never brought it up.

At some point in the mid-to-late afternoon when she was on phone duty, she had gotten a call from a kid who couldn't have been older than thirteen, claiming that a demon was in his apartment. For some reason she couldn't just hang up on this kid, even though he didn't know the password. She wasn't heartless, after all.

"I'm sorry," Lady started, glancing at Dante for guidance. He was sitting on the couch, and had glanced up from his magazine. "If you don't have the password—"

"Please!" the boy insisted. "They—it has my sister—"

"Hang up," Dante instructed, as the boy continued pleading into her ear. "If he doesn't have the password—"

"He's a _kid_, Dante," Lady hissed, covering the mouthpiece with her hand. "It's not like he talks to guys like Enzo to know this kind of thing."

"Lady," Dante said, putting down the magazine and sitting up. "Where would he have gotten the number from if he didn't know in the first place?"

"Aren't we listed?" she asked, frowning.

"Come on, lady!" the boy begged, making a strangely strangled noise that she assumed was a suppressed sob. She snapped her attention back to the phone, and wondered if he had said her name or not before deciding that he wouldn't have known to use the capital. "Please! You have—"

The line went dead, and Lady lowered her hand and looked at Dante, appalled. He was standing next to her, his finger pressing the telephone hook down. He looked at her pointedly and explained: "It's April Fool's Day."

"Really? I hadn't noticed," she deadpanned.

"See what happens when they call back," he added. As if on cue, the phone started ringing again, and he removed his finger from the hook. "Go on," he instructed.

She slowly lifted the receiver back towards her ear and slowly said: "Devil May Cry."

"What the _hell_, lady!" the boy from before shouted. He seemed angry and not scared, that was for sure. "I could have _died_!"

"Are you okay?" she asked in concern, glancing at Dante to see his reaction: he was staring at some point on the wall, and yet he seemed alert.

"Tell her there's a demon eating your leg!" she heard a voice on the other end of the line faintly say.

"Shut up!" the kid answered, but then quickly stuttered a recovery: "N—no, I mean—shut the door before the demon gets in!"

"This is a prank," Lady asked, though it was more of a statement than a question. "Don't you kids have better things to do?"

"No! There's—there's a demon eating my leg!" the boy insisted.

"Call when you have an _actual_ emergency," she snapped before slamming the phone down on the receiver. "And what are _you_ smirking about?" she shouted at her partner, raising her arms in irritation. "I was _had_! That's not funny!"

"No, it just shows that you're a softy for kids," Dante responded, laughing lightly.

"I—" she started before realizing that she didn't have a good comeback. "And you're not?"

The phone rang again, cutting off whatever answer he had planned to give, and he growled in irritation. "I'll get it," he said lowly, grabbing the receiver. "Devil May Cry."

"Help me, mister!" she faintly heard the boy say through the phone, and made an annoyed face to clue Dante in to the identity of the potential client. "There's a demon in my house and he's got my sister, and that other bitch wouldn't—"

"Do you actually have a demon in your house?" Dante asked impatiently.

"N—yeah! He's eating my sister's leg!"

"Here's my advice," Dante instructed, though from the tone of his voice it sounded more like a threat than a helpful word of wisdom. "Don't call back unless you _actually_ have a demon eating your sister's leg. That is, unless you _want_ a demon to eat your sister's leg."

"I—I don't have a sister," the boy responded, his voice suddenly genuinely fearful.

"It's okay. I'm not picky," Dante continued, and though the boy couldn't see it, he bared his teeth. The bared teeth quickly morphed into a smile and he casually hung up the phone and returned to the couch. "He won't be bothering us again."

"He hung up?" Lady asked, picking up the magazine she had been reading—it was one of Dante's gun magazines and she had already read it, but in her distraction she had left the book she had been reading at home this morning.

"Yup," Dante informed her, stretching out across the couch. "I guess I scared him."

"Won't he tell someone that you threatened him?" Lady asked in concern. "Not to mention the fact that only Enzo and I know that you're ... well..." She wasn't sure why she trailed off there. Dante was a demon, or a half-demon anyway, but it wasn't something that really bothered her anymore. The fact that she couldn't bring herself to say it then was a bit disconcerting, and from the almost stunned look on Dante's face she could only assume that he felt the same way.

"If he even tells an adult what he had been doing, they would probably just assume that I had lied to scare him off," Dante said, the quick flash of vulnerability on his face disappearing as he spoke. "It's no big deal."

"I guess," Lady responded, thumbing through the magazine to find that one article that she remembered liking the first time she had read it. "Do you get a lot of prank calls on April Fool's?"

"Not usually." Dante shrugged. "Most people don't want to mess with the guy who hunts demons for a living."

Lady laughed. "Good point."

* * *

Lady had fallen asleep; she wasn't sure why, or when, or for how long. That had only been the third thought that had run through her head, the first having been: "Was this Dante's doing?" The second: "Oh God, did he prank me when I was asleep?"

After checking her bare legs and arms for scribbles in marker, her hand for shaving cream, or a glass of water by where her hand had been hanging off the edge of the couch, she ran to the bathroom to make sure that he hadn't drawn anything on her face. Surprisingly, there was nothing there—nor was there any plastic wrap on the toilet seat, or a mechanism to make toilet water squirt back up at her, because she checked a second time.

"Something's definitely up," Dante said from his seat at his desk, his arms folded and the magazine on the desk. Lady jumped: she hadn't noticed him there before. "What's wrong?"

"There's nothing wrong," Lady lied. "I just can't believe I fell asleep." That was true, but it didn't exactly make up for the lies she had been telling all day.

"Don't," Dante warned, rubbing his head as if to massage a headache away. "You're acting strangely and I want to know why."

"I'm not—"

"_Lady_," Dante half-shouted, his hand still massaging his forehead in irritation. Lady went completely silent. "I'm ... I'm sorry for shouting," he immediately apologized.

"It's fine," she responded, and wondered why she had been so meek about it.

"No," he muttered, shaking his head as he stood. "Don't... Is this because I'm a demon?"

She blinked. "Why would it be, and why would it bother me _now_ anyway?" Her fear had been realized: he was getting upset over the demon thing. Sure it had been an issue before, but how was she supposed to show him that it wasn't anymore? He was a demon, fine—but that didn't mean he was bad. Just different. Far be it from her to criticize anyone for being different.

"You kind of bolted after the job last night," he explained.

"I was _tired_," Lady answered, rubbing the back of her neck. "It was late. I knew it would take a while to get home and I wanted to do that before I crashed my bike. I'm sorry I didn't wait for you, but you looked like you would be fine. You were energetic, even."

The confusion on Dante's face was clear. "So, you didn't see...?"

"See what?" she asked now as confused as him.

"No, nothing," he quickly answered.

"_Tell_ me," Lady insisted, reaching out and putting a hand on his shoulder in comfort. "If it's gotten _you_ of all people all shaken up then I should know about it."

Dante smiled half-heartedly as if to reassure her, but then dropped the act and looked away. "I ... used my devil trigger last night."

"Okay, so?" she asked.

"_So_?" Dante frowned. "You've never seen it. I thought you _did_. I thought you had gotten freaked out or something!"

"Why..." she started, but immediately shut her mouth. She didn't need to ask him why he had gotten so worked up when she already knew the answer. Dante would never admit it to her, but she could tell that he always felt a little bit self-conscious about his demonic side, particularly when interacting with her. She probably hadn't helped by continuously insisting on that fact when they had first met, but she assumed that the issue was older than seven and ran deeper than any of her scars.

Dante returned to his chair. The shit-eating grin was long since gone, and all sense of flamboyant arrogance washed clean away. The man she saw was more like a cold, scared child than anything else, one that was staring at her in concern, simultaneously anticipating and wishing away her inevitable rejection for what he was. It was then that Lady realized that the Dante she knew and interacted with on a daily basis was a lie: this was what he really was. She would never tell him, but she respected him—both the arrogant showboater and the scared child—even more now.

Come to think of it, those fears explained the coffee this morning. God.

"Dante," Lady started. "I'm not scared of your demonic side." She shrugged. "It's there. Whatever. And my eyes are two different colors. It's what makes us different from everyone else."

"Thanks," he admitted, nodding at her words of encouragement. Little traces of the shit-eating grin started creeping back onto his face, and while she knew she would miss Vulnerable Dante, she welcomed back the arrogant asshole with open arms.

"You don't have to do it now, but you can show me your devil form someday," she continued, smiling herself. "I'd like to see it at some point."

Dante looked like he was about to respond to her, but something glinted in his eyes. He suddenly leaned back, flamboyant, arrogant Dante having fully returned with a vengeance. "So if it wasn't that, then why have you been jumpy today?"

Lady laughed. Well, he had been honest with her; it would only be right for her to be honest with him. "It's April Fool's Day."

"I know," Dante said, nodding.

"I thought you were going to prank the hell out of me," she admitted, rubbing the back of her neck self-consciously. "You seem like you would be the type to do that."

"Not on the first date," Dante responded, leaning forward with a slightly lascivious look on his face; Lady promptly smacked it off. "No, but seriously, I didn't plan on doing anything," he continued. "Don't really do the pranks anymore, you know? Takes too much effort." He leaned back in his seat, exhaling. "Well, at least everything you did today makes sense. Were you checking for pranks?"

Lady nodded. "I never did them myself, but I got pranked a lot as a kid. It sucked."

"Well, don't worry. I don't do pranks," Dante promised.

"I appreciate it, thanks," she said, smiling.

* * *

They both realized after another hour or so of chatting that even if people were calling in with jobs, they would be too tired to work tonight. Dante closed up early, promptly unhooking the phone and dragging himself upstairs with a tired wave goodbye to Lady, who was likewise tiredly shoving the door open. She locked the door behind her, pocketed her key, and trudged down to where she had left her bike—

—which was covered in toilet paper. Lady groaned; her motorcycle was quite literally _gift-wrapped_ in toilet paper. Damn it, she was tired enough as it was and this was just delaying her trip home.

Immediately, she began tearing at the offensive white material, wishing it would all just disappear so she could drive home and once again pass out for what would hopefully be a good night's sleep tonight. When she finally reached the bottom layer, she found, sitting on the seat, a little piece of paper that read: "Love, Dante."

"Son of a _bitch_," Lady whispered, staring down at the paper in awe. The bastard had _tricked_ her. He had—

Behind her, the bright neon sign was humming, dulling out all other sounds around her. She imagined that it was Dante himself watching her, laughing at her; Lady couldn't help but laugh as well.


	8. Easter, 2007

Lady, as I have officially decided, is an Orthodox Christian. I'm not, so it was a tougher decision to make since I was dealing with religious practices that I'm a bit less familiar with, but it worked out best not only for my schedule but also in terms of Lady's heritage. I know the chapter is late, but Sunday rolled around and I realized that I hadn't worked on it at all, and today was the first chance I got after that. So here we are.

Additionally, this chapter marks a jump back to the Dante-Lady-Trish period more specifically towards the beginning. So hey, did you want to see Lady and Trish friendship? Feast your eyes. If you didn't? ...um. Sorry.

Oh, by the way, the next chapter is going to be for Mother's Day, and then, a month later, Father's Day. This is probably a good thing given the ungodly schedule I'm going to have in May, so I can curl up into a little ball until my shows and homework assignments are over and done with. Sorry for the gaps, but it's for the best—this chapter was late as it was.

**WARNING:** this chapter deals with religious themes, and characters will say (or do) things that don't reflect my actual opinion. If for one reason or another that makes you uncomfortable, I would suggest you just stop reading this chapter . If you do read the chapter through to the end, or even if you don't, please be considerate in expressing any opinions you might have via review, lest someone get offended.

* * *

**Observance**

_Orthodox Easter_

_The first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon in the Julian Calendar, 2007_

She hadn't gone to church since her mother's funeral sixteen years ago. She had been inside of a church, of course, having been on many a mission that involved demons on holy ground, but simply couldn't bring herself to pray to a God that had made her father dabble in the supernatural and completely upend her life. Before then, she had gone often—not every day, or even every Sunday, but at least once a month. Back then, she had still believed.

Now, Lady had some reverence for the Church, respect for what she one believed in despite having lost her faith. If she had faith, it wasn't in God and it probably wasn't in other people, though she did appreciate the ways in which people and things continued to surprise her. If a demon, of all things, could be a kind soul—albeit a loudmouth, slob, and incorrigible flirt—then anything was possible.

If people had told her that she would eventually feel the need to go back to church she would have laughed at their face. Perhaps people sensed this, and for this reason never brought up religious topics with her. As it was, she had started attending a boarding school after her mother's death and father's disappearance, as there had been no other living family members to take care of the sixteen-year-old girl, and Lady's inheritance was enough to let her finish her high school education at least. This new school was secular, and as a result there was no obligation to attend mass services at the nearby church—which were protestant, anyway—if she had even wanted to. There was no need to worship and pray, no need to be a part of a religious community: she was more interested in her studies, immersing herself in schoolwork and keeping to herself for the most part.

Besides, there had been her entire desire for revenge, which didn't exactly match the good Christian mindset that her mother had instilled in her, and which was slowly fading away. Perhaps God existed, but He certainly wasn't doing anything to help her.

Then something happened, and Lady started toying with the idea of going to church again. Just _once_, really, no big deal, but she felt like she needed to. It was something about that one New Year's Eve with Dante and Trish that had opened her up to the idea of being a part of a family again for the first time in sixteen years. Because her sense of religion had died when her family had, she associated one with the other, and by meditating on one she couldn't help but remember the other.

_Once_. For old time's sake.

* * *

"Wait, Lady," Dante started as she was fathering her belongings together. It was a Friday night, and the three of them had just been hanging out a bit—nothing special, just a beer and conversation. As usual, Dante had been the middle of the conversation, with Lady and Trish speaking more to him than to each other. Honestly, Lady liked the woman, but found it hard to associate with her when she seemed so intent on marking her territory. What did it matter, anyway? Just because Dante was the first—and for a while, only—person that Trish had met in the Human world, it didn't mean that he was hers and hers alone. Dante, as it turned out, had other _friends_. Friends like her.

"Yeah, what?" Lady asked, grabbing her jacket from where she had tossed it over the arm of the sofa.

"Trish and I are going to Arn's on Sunday," Dante continued, ignoring the look that Trish was giving him. "What to come?"

Arn was their favorite motorcycle mechanic and supply man. He didn't live in their city but the next one over, so they only usually went to him if they needed a good fix or for an occasional upgrade. This seemed more like a casual visit to pick up some cool parts, and she had actually wanted him to look at brakes anyway because she had been skidding a lot more lately ... but it was on _Sunday_. "Can't," she briefly replied, hoping that they would take the response as it was and not question her. She also opted to ignore the slightly relieved look on Trish's face, likely pleased that Lady wouldn't be there to intrude on their time together.

"Why not?" Dante asked, crossing his arms. "It's going to be awesome."

"I'm _busy_," Lady explained, this time a little more insistently.

Trish snorted lightly.

"Yeah, what _she_ said," Dante said, pointing to the blonde. "Don't you want to go? Or do you just not want to go with _us_? It's fine if you don't want to."

Lady groaned lightly, turning away from them a bit. "Look, this Sunday, I'm ... going to church," she said, putting on her jacket.

Just like that, she felt the energy of the room change, though she could have explained the sensation if she had been asked. It was as if the temperature suddenly dropped, the air prickling with cold and static that stabbed needles into her skin. A chill crawled up her middle and settled in her solar plexus, so that her breaking suddenly felt as sharp and cold as the air around her. Turning to face the others, she found Dante watching her in surprise—almost horror—and Trish in skeptical amusement. Lady was almost surprised by their reactions, but recognized that her admission had, to them, come out of nowhere. They didn't know that she had been wrestling with the decision for some time now.

"Why?" Dante asked, stunned.

"It's Easter," Lady said, opting for the simple, hopefully inoffensive explanation rather than a longer one.

Dante frowned in confusion. "I thought Easter was last Sunday or something."

"_Orthodox_ Easter," she clarified. The words rolled off her tongue familiarly, though she hadn't said it in the longest time—there hadn't been a need.

"You are?" Trish asked, crossing her arms. Her expression had barely changed since Lady's initial admission. "You never struck me as the religious type."

Trish was right, but it still stung: Lady wasn't religious anymore, but the comment seemed like an affront in her newly revived interest in going to church. It wasn't like she had _found God_ or anything—hardly—she just wanted to go to church for the first time in sixteen years. For peace of mind. "I'm _not_," Lady corrected. "I'm just ... going to church."

"Why?" Dante repeated, just as confused as ever. "I mean, what's the point of going to church if you're not religious?"

Lady hesitated. "It's ... a symbolic gesture."

"Yeah? Of what?" Dante pressed. He seemed almost angry, she noticed, and wondered why this was setting him off.

"It's just something that I haven't done in years, that's all," she explained, attempting to tread lightly. "I was raised in this religion, I drifted away, and now I just want to go to a service, just to—"

"Lady, let me explain something to you," Dante interrupted, moving forward in an almost intimidating way. "Christianity doesn't believe in me. In Trish. In your job. _Religion_ doesn't believe in me."

"Well obviously _I_ do," Lady said, her tone almost light if it hadn't been for the lump forming in her throat.

"Then why are you wasting your time going to _church_ when the priest or whatever is just going to tell you that demons don't exist? That my _father_ doesn't exist?" he continued, and if she wondered if he had actually just gotten taller or if her mind was playing tricks on her.

"That's not what Easter mass is about, Dante." As much as she sympathized with him, she needed to stand her ground. She had made her decision, and it had nothing to do with him. "Even in _normal_ mass, it's not like they add: 'Oh, and by the way, demons don't exist.' And I know that _Rome_ officially says that demons don't exist and it's heresy to think they do, but Orthodoxy hasn't been vocal on this matter, so as far as I'm concerned—"

"I'm—no, just—stop talking," Dante snapped. He turned away from her, back straighter than she had ever seen it. The familiar, casual slouch to his posture was gone, replaced by something rigid and surprisingly intimidating, even as he was retreating. "I'm not fucking talking about this right now."

Lady was angry—how could he shoot her down like this? Yes, as a half-demon, it was hard to appreciate any organized religion, which didn't accept him as a person. But this wasn't about _him_, it was about _her_ and getting over _her_ disconnect with religion, and for fuck's sake going to church for the first time in sixteen _years_ when she hadn't been able to. She was trying to _heal_. Why couldn't he respect that? "Dante..." she started warningly.

"_Don't_," he sharply said, his head turned over his shoulder to look at her. She had never been afraid of Dante. He was too strangely goofy of a guy to fear, strong but never vicious, and more a protector than a hired killer—despite the fact that that's what they all were. Even when he succumbed to the bloodlust of battle, he was still Dante, and therefore nothing to be afraid of. And even back then on Temen-ni-gru, when he was still a nameless demon who could take a bullet to the brain and simply wipe the blood from his forehead, she didn't fear him. But something about him, right in that moment, terrified her.

Thankfully the moment was brief, and he quickly retreated upstairs, probably to stew in his juices. That was Dante's usual way of dealing with things that made him angry—that or going hunting, or sometimes just going _out_, and what he did then she didn't want to know despite all of the guesses she had. She still felt unsettled, even though she knew that he was just overreacting just because he didn't approve of religion. He still could have been more supportive of her choice.

"God, this was an awful idea," Lady muttered, suddenly overcome by regret. Whether she regretted her choice or the fact that she had told him, she wasn't sure. "Maybe it's not worth going."

"You can do whatever you want, at this point," Trish said, sitting on the edge of the desk and looking at a spot on the wall. Lady had almost forgotten that the blonde demon was in there, despite having just spoken for Trish's benefit—maybe she just hadn't expected Trish to really answer. "The damage is done."

"Me wanting to go to church has _nothing_ to do with the two of you," Lady snapped, crossing her arms tensely. "He didn't have to throw a fit."

"You don't see anything wrong with it?" Trish calmly accused, standing and focusing her sharp gaze on Lady. Trish didn't get angry easily, more often than not coldly scolding them without raising her voice. It was a little frustrating. "Of course you don't, you're _human_. You can just skip off to your church and listen to people who say we don't exist while praying to a god that doesn't exist."

"And what the fuck do you know about religion, Trish?" Lady shouted. "You're a demon! You don't know shit about the way human society works!" She grabbed her keys from the spot on the desk where she had left them and stormed towards the door. "Maybe if you stopped parroting Dante and developed a fucking opinion of your _own_ you would actually _learn_ something!" she added as she threw open the door, stalking off into the night.

* * *

_1981_

"Why isn't Daddy going to church with us?"

Kalina Ann turned to face her daughter, her mouth slightly open as she tried to process the question and find the best way to answer it. Young as she was, Mary knew that she had just asked a loaded question, one that her mother wasn't sure how to answer. "Daddy doesn't usually go to church," she explained, looking back over at the mirror to tuck a loose strand of black hair back into her bun.

"But _why_?" Mary pressed, squirming in the white dress that her mother had only recently buttoned her into. "Won't God be mad if Daddy doesn't go to church?"

"Daddy doesn't go to church," Kalina Ann repeated, as if stalling. "And God won't be mad, because Daddy still ... _loves_ God. In his own way." She sighed lightly, staring at her reflection briefly. "That's what counts."

"Then why do we have to go to church?" Mary kicked off one of her party shoes, tired of the way they pinched her feet. "Can't I just stay home with Daddy?"

"No, sweetie," her mother corrected, her eyes wide as she kneeled in front of Mary to put the shoe back on. "It's an honor to go to church and pray to God. We get to speak to him directly that way. Daddy doesn't go to church because he's chosen not to, just as we choose to." She clasped her hand on her daughter's knee and smiled. "We choose God. And that's always the right choice."

Mary nodded. She had wanted to ask if, when she was older, she too could choose not to go to church, but her mother seemed happy and she didn't want to do anything to ruin that moment. Her mother always did have the widest and brightest smile.

"He'll just meet us at Aunt Sonya's after church," Kalina Ann added, standing up to smooth out her skirt.

"Is Aunt Sonya making kulich?" Mary asked, jumping up excitedly. "She makes the _best_ kulich."

Kalina Ann winced lightly, once again hesitating. "No, dear," she started. "Your Aunt Sonya—"

"Why not?" Mary demanded. "She _always_ makes kulich! There _has_ to be kulich!"

"There _will_ be," Kalina Ann assured her daughter. "I'm sure someone will bring kulich. Just not Aunt Sonya."

"Oh." Mary nodded. "Okay." She paused for a moment to think before adding: "It just won't be as good."

* * *

_2007_

She had tried to make kulich, attempting to recall the old family recipe, but frankly Lady was not a good cook by any means. Following the recipe was simple enough, but there was a certain finesse to cooking that she just didn't possess. The texture was never right, or she used too much milk or too much yeast, or she baked it for too long and it came out looking more like a brick than a cake.

On top of that, she had spent her Saturday trying to bake the cake, which ended up being a terrible idea because she had tried to keep fast the day before Easter. Staring at the milk and candied fruits, and even at the unappetizing cake batter, had been far too difficult. By the end of the day she had just given up on baking a cake, opting instead to watch TV and pretend that she didn't miss her friends. A part of her wanted to think that it was Christian forgiveness that had freed itself from wherever it had been locked away, but that wasn't it. She just regretted her words, but was too proud to admit it.

She ate Chinese leftovers once midnight rolled around. She wasn't sure if that was how and when she was supposed to break fast, but damn it she was hungry.

By the next morning, she attended Easter mass at the nearest Orthodox Church. Fortunately this church, like the one she had attended as a child, held a mass on Sunday morning as well instead of just holding the midnight Vigil mass, so she didn't need to participate in any of the rites that she wasn't familiar with—she was out of practice enough as it was.

The church bustled with a festive energy, and Lady was pleased to see some of the things that she remembered from childhood. There were the older, more devout parishioners, the families with the anxious-looking kids, the bored teenagers who really would have rather slept until the afternoon... It was familiar, but she still felt so disconnected from it. Her hand ached slightly as it tried to grasp another than that she knew hadn't been here for years, her head aching as it forcibly recalled memories that she had tried to ignore for years.

She quickly scooted into a pew in the back, trying to ignore some of the parishioner's glares at her tough-looking boots, bare legs, and messy hair. She flipped through the service book until the procession and beginning of the service.

It was ... nice.

Honestly, that was all she had to say. The chorus sang beautifully—she found herself singing the hymns as if she hadn't avoided service for sixteen years—and the priest spoke very well—the homily seemed very wise at the time, though she immediately couldn't remember what it had been about. And that was the problem: while she was very impressed by the service and the faith of the parishioners, she felt so disconnected that none of it sunk in. It had just been too long, she guessed.

When the time came for Holy Communion, Lady couldn't bring herself to stand. The Eucharist was for the _faithful_—she couldn't really put herself in that category. It would be wrong to partake in something she wasn't sure she believed in, and so she contented herself to watch, allowing the others in her pew to pass her to go up themselves. Now they definitely say her as an outsider, and they were right.

* * *

_1981_

"Mary asked me today why you don't go to church with us," Mary heard Kalina Ann say as she stood outside of her parents' room. She hadn't been able to fall asleep, and as such had gone to ask her mother for some Ovaltine before stopping to listen to her parents' conversation. "I told her that you choose not to, but that you still love God."

Her father snorted lightly before responding: "What do you want me to do, start going to church?"

"Yes," she answered, once again earning a snort from her husband. "I pray for you, Victor. I pray that you will start going to church with us again—that you haven't lost your faith."

"You shouldn't pray for me," Victor instructed. Mary wasn't sure why her father wouldn't want her mother to pray for him. Did that mean that she should stop praying for her father as well? She prayed for all of her family, when she did. "Instead pray for Sonya. She was too sick to have hosted Easter this year. She move around as much as she does with that cancer—"

"Please, I don't want to talk about it," Kalina Ann interrupted. Mary didn't know what cancer was, but it didn't sound like a good thing. She would have to ask her mother later.

"Your mother had it, your sister has it—Kalina, _you_ might get it, and yet you never get yourself tested." Victor exhaled in frustration. "You can't be this irresponsible. Think about your daughter."

"I'm _fine_. We don't need to talk about this." Kalina Ann paused for a moment before adding: "Besides, it's in God's hands in the end."

Victor laughed derisively. "That's stupid and you know it."

"It's _not_, and maybe if you went to _church_ and _prayed_ instead of doing whatever it is you do instead, you would _understand_," Kalina Ann hissed.

"Fine, you know what? You respect my beliefs, and I'll respect yours," Victor decided, cutting the conversation short with a usual impatient dismissal. One of the lights in the room turned off and Mary heard the sound of sheets rustling. "Turn off your light. I need to sleep. Lots of work tomorrow."

"Give me a minute—I'm coming," Kalina Ann said. A few seconds later the other lamp was turned off; the room, like the rest of the house, went dark. There was no point in disturbing her parents now—and besides, Mary knew that things crept around in the shadows, and it was better to retreat to her room to try to sleep than risk getting snatched up.

"What? Now? No—I'm trying to sleep," she heard her father say as she tiptoed back to her bedroom.

"You're _always_ trying to sleep," her mother responded, her voice getting softer and softer with each step away from the door. "I don't know what I'm doing wrong..."

* * *

_2007_

"It's _you_," Trish said from Dante's chair behind the desk.

"Where's Dante?" Lady asked, walking into the office with a casualness that she hoped would put Trish in a better mood.

"Out," Trish responded, looking back down at the magazine. "Picking up pizza. He doesn't want delivery charges."

Lady nodded, sitting down on the couch. "So did you get anything at Arn's?"

"We didn't end up going," Trish explained. "Dante was being too grumpy to want to make the trip." She shut the magazine and put it down on the desk. "Look, what are you doing here after—what the hell are you holding?"

"This?" Lady indicated the cake on her lap. "It's kulich."

"What is it, a peace offering?" Trish asked, standing to get a closer look. "I don't know if Dante will be swayed with cake."

"It's a traditional Easter food," Lady explained, standing to hand the cake to Trish. "My family has this recipe that was passed down from generation to generation, all the way back from Russia. This one's actually store-bought, because I'm a terrible cook and couldn't make it the right way. But my Aunt Sonya was really good at it."

"So it's a peace offering," Trish concluded.

"Pretty much," Lady admitted.

Trish nodded and put the cake down on the desk. "I'll give it to him for you. You'll probably get a call from him if he accepts it."

"Are you trying to get me to leave?" Lady asked, frowning.

"I was _trying_ to be subtle," Trish clarified.

"I'm not just here to apologize for Dante. I also want to make amends with _you_." Lady sat back down and looked down at her hands, which for some reason felt stiff. "I shouldn't have said what I said the other day. About you not understanding. It was wrong of me to judge."

She looked back up at Trish, who was staring at her expectantly. "Go on," Trish instructed.

"I mean, I barely understand Christianity myself," Lady continued, "and I'm actually Christian—well, not anymore. I don't know what I am, but I don't believe in what I used to believe in. Can't."

"Why, because it's _wrong_?" Trish asked judgmentally, crossing her arms.

Lady winced, that little shred of devotion that remained in her essence rendered uncomfortable by Trish's words. "Not exactly," she explained. "I can't _explain_ religion. I'm not sure why the existence of demons has to clash with God's existence, and why everyone can't be right. I mean, you can't _disprove_ God, can you?"

Trish looked away. "No."

"Exactly. The thing is, I believe in God, but I don't believe in religion. And that ... well, that's _supported_ by the existence of demons, but it doesn't _define_ my beliefs." Lady waited for Trish to say something, and instead found that the blonde was listening to her with an uncharacteristic amount of attention. "I wasn't going to church to spite you guys, I was going to church because I haven't been in sixteen _years_. I started doubting when I was younger, when Aunt Sonya died and my Mom started getting sick, but then my father_—_" She interrupted herself, wrung her hands to quell potential tears, and continued: "I'm thirty-two years old. It's been half a lifetime since I've prayed and I wanted to see if I could do it again. And I can't."

Trish sat down on the couch next to her. "Are you ... glad you went, though?"

"I think so," Lady responded. "If anything I can't say that I haven't _tried_." She laughed despite herself and rubbed at an eye that was just starting to well up. "My mother wouldn't be proud of me abandoning religion like this. She wasn't happy when my _father_ did, but he did it for the wrong reasons. I'm doing it because I don't want to force myself to believe when I can't. Whatever little shred of religious faith I have left in me knows that it's wrong and that I shouldn't." She looked at Trish. "I just needed to feel that for myself."

"I've been unfair to you," Trish suddenly and guiltily said. Lady was surprised by the soft expression on the blonde's face in that moment, but didn't want to interrupt what Trish was about to say. "I traveled so I could open myself up to new places and different people and learn what it's like to be human, but then I came back and expected things to be the same as they were before." Trish squirmed slightly, clearly rendered uncomfortable by the idea of opening up about her feelings. "The point is ... I want to be your friend."

"Well, _someone_ needs to be there when Dante's being an idiot," Lady joked, trying to take some of the heat off of Trish.

Trish laughed. "Did you ever live here?" She laughed again when Lady shook her head. "You didn't miss much."

"I can imagine." Lady smiled and looked down at her hands. "I _am_ sorry about what I said before."

"Apology accepted. And—"

Trish stopped talking when the front door opened and Dante walked into the shop. He didn't look at the couch where Trish and Lady were sitting—Lady figured that he had recognized her bike out front and planned on ignoring her. He walked over to his desk and put the two boxes of pizza that he was holding, pausing for a second when he noticed the kulich on the table. "Trish," he said, "what's this?"

"Cake," the blonde responded, looking at Lady slyly. Lady got the impression that Trish knew something, but what it was Lady didn't know. "Lady brought it over."

"She did, did she?" Dante asked, and turned to the couch, locking eyes with Trish. "Well, if she brought cake over then she can have a slice of pizza."

"Only one?" Trish bartered.

"We'll see if the cake is any good," Dante added.

Lady smiled and, at Trish's nudging, stood to go get some pizza. She hummed while she moved, relieved by the fact that Dante wasn't mad at her anymore, or at least not _as_ mad. She knew that they had talked about religion at some point, but whether he remembered was a mystery.

"What are you humming?" Dante asked, now looking directly at her.

She paused, embarrassed—she had been humming one of the hymns from church that morning. "Oh, nothing," Lady said, glancing at him over her shoulder as she grabbed a slice of pizza, "just an old song that came to mind."

"Oh," Dante said. "It sounds pretty."

Lady smiled at the irony. "Thanks."


End file.
